


What Are You Thinking?

by blythechild



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Best Friends, Denial of Feelings, Developing Relationship, Drinking, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Falling In Love, Fantasizing, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Friends With Benefits, Hostage Situations, One Night Stands, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Romantic Friendship, Sexual Content, Team as Family, Workplace Relationship, Workplace Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-12
Updated: 2016-06-12
Packaged: 2018-07-14 16:37:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7180577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blythechild/pseuds/blythechild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emily Prentiss has a variety of personal fantasies. She considers them harmless and convenient in light of her career and general disappointment with real relationships. She's not looking for complications in her life. But a work indiscretion blurs the lines for her and leads to far more issues than she could have anticipated. All of a sudden, her fantasy life seems less harmless and more like a trap she's set for herself.</p><p> </p><p>This is a work of fanfiction and as such I do not claim ownership over the characters herein. It was created as a personal amusement. This story contains adults themes and sexuality and should not be read by those under the age of 18.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Are You Thinking?

The thing that strikes Emily when she first arrives at the Unit is how beautiful everyone is. Seriously, how is it even possible that there are _this many_ attractive people with advanced degrees working in the same specialized field within the Bureau? She thinks that the inappropriate fantasy side of her brain might explode from it. And given that everyone (herself included) seems so buttoned down and repressed, well… fantasy explosion, yep, it’s gonna happen.

She conjures up elaborate scenarios before she really gets to know any of them. It’s always better that way in the beginning because you can go any way you want with it, but once you see Dave Rossi in a pair of boxers with bedhead for example, everything becomes too earthbound to get her juices flowing. That’s why she never shits where she eats; it’s not the ensuing awkwardness or entanglements that drive her away, it’s the unrelenting reality. Her fantasy life is a rich one and that, combined with the occasional one-and-done hook-up usually sees her through. She feels it’s a good system and it works for her.

She has a typical porn film fantasy about Morgan. It makes her laugh because inside her mind she can even hear the 70s chicka-chicka-waa-waa soundtrack that goes along with it. If she’s feeling a little submissive in the moment, she changes it up with a cheesy Bodyguard one because all of those muscles ought to be put to good use and Morgan’s got a pretty real hero complex so it makes a weird sort of sense. 

Her Hotch fantasy is all about hate fucking. It makes her feel dirty and disrespectful (because despite their initial friction, she ends up respecting the hell out of him and she feels that regard is mutual), but it also gets her off so hard it nearly fries a few synapses along the way. She’s sure that he’d never be able to look her in the eye again if he ever heard the way she curses him out and demeans him while they’re both coming like booster rockets in her mind. 

Her Rossi fantasy is all about his mouth. Somehow, his excessive womanizing reputation gets translated to this tremendous willingness to do anything to get his partner off and she puts that idea to good use by making him eat her out and play with her ass for hours. Rossi is the fantasy she worries about the least because she thinks that if it ever actually happened, they’d both be happy to move on afterwards. No strings. 

Her Reid fantasy is problematic because it keeps changing. In the beginning, it’s all about deflowering him and feeling the swell of power that comes along with that and his natural passiveness. But it also feels predatory and that dampens her enthusiasm. After she gets to know him a little, her fantasy takes on the color of him having a secret life and kinks that he keeps mostly to himself. Scenarios with him become narrative-heavy and surprising, but there’s an element of shame there as well because she cares for him and wants to protect the quiet gentleness he has. She has to be in the right mood for these ones, and has to dedicate a large chunk of time to spooling the whole thing out. She doesn’t do it that often but when she does, she feels wrung out and emotional afterwards, and she sleeps like the dead.

Though she’s not really fem-curious, she even has a few scenes revolving around J.J. and Garcia, but the Garcia ones sputter out almost as soon as she gets to know the woman because they become such fast friends and it silences her libido on the subject. Her J.J. fantasies are mostly about mindblowing cunnilingus with a lot of giggling afterwards. It’s more about being herself and being unguarded with someone who knows exactly what to do with your clit. Once J.J. and Will get together, there’s a brief threesome scenario that she dreams up with them, but the reality of them is just so cute and satisfying that Emily shelves it out of a need to convince herself that she _isn’t_ a giant, insensitive perv. 

Basically, her fantasies bear no relation to the people who become her de facto family. That’s why sleeping with Hotch becomes such a mistake. It just happens the one time a few months after Haley’s death when they are both stupid drunk and he is practically leaking a need for comfort. The next morning she wakes with a screaming hangover and a profound desire to never do that again. He isn’t at all like she thought he’d be – all gentle consideration and tenderness that comes from a man who’s never fucked a woman he didn’t love before. That alone puts the brakes on any further experimentation even if he hadn’t sat up in bed and explained that while he cares for her, he doesn’t see her _that way_ and it can never happen again. She agrees, they leave it at that, and she silently retires her Hotch hate-fuck fantasy because she’ll never be able to enjoy it again.

But she should’ve known that it wouldn’t end there. Both she and Hotch move on and are professional about it, but she occasionally finds herself staring at him and seeing him straining to come rather than his SSAC scowl. It’s only natural, and she shakes it off, but she works with _profilers_. During a case outline meeting, when her mind wanders in an unsavory direction and then quickly lopes back, she sees Reid eying her sideways for an instant before chirping up with an anecdote about piquerism. He doesn’t mention it later but she sighs anyway. Being a horny human is so unfortunate sometimes.

She tries dating a few randoms but the reality of it leaves her cold. She’s fallen into the trap of fantasy and she knows it, and it upsets her more than she thought it would. Not only are real lovers disappointing, but fantasy lovers _who become real_ are also a letdown. She realizes that she’s been diddling herself for years in her mind using the bodies of her co-workers to mask her huge masturbation kink. And the only reason why it’s happened is because she never lets anyone get close enough to see what she really wants. While, in the past, she’s always tossed off her singleness as a function of limited time and opportunity – both of which she thinks could be remedied when her schedule permits - she now thinks that she may have constructed a life in which she will die alone and unknown. That thought gets her so damned depressed that she thinks about shelving all of her fantasies for good. But then, what would she be left with?

She figures that she’ll just thrash around in this mess of hers until she finds a way out. It never occurs to her to talk to anyone about it. And then out of the blue, at a post-crazy-case-let’s-get-our-drink-on event, he just wanders up and spits it out.

“What are you thinking about?” Reid leans back against the bar wall to mimic her stance. He doesn’t know that she _needs_ the wall to prevent from falling down.

“Huh?” she says eloquently as she tries to make the three blurry versions of him into one guy. She was actually just thinking about alcohol poisoning…

“You’ve got this crazy serious look on your face.” His fingers do a magic little dance in front of her eyes. They leave vapor trails. “It’s been there all night. Actually, it’s been there on and off for a few months now.”

“Stop profiling, Reid,” she slurs dismissively. “We’re off the clock.”

“It’s not profiling, it’s concern.” He stares at her for a long moment while the bar’s music vibrates through the wall at her back. “Is it about Hotch?”

She whips her gaze sideways and then wishes she hadn’t. Spilling her drink a little, she grapples to secure herself to the wall. Reid reaches out a hand to steady her. He looks guilty.

“Sorry, I know it’s none of my business… but like I said, I’m concerned.”

“How do you even know?!”

He arches his eyebrows in a ‘really?’ stare. She shakes her head and waves his concern away.

“It’s not about Hotch. He and I are fine. It was one time… I’m not going back there.”

“Well then… what’s going on with you?”

She sighs as she looks out over the bar’s tiny dance floor. Morgan is out there making a drunken ass of himself again with either three women or one large, blurry one. She wishes that she could get her eyes to focus. Scratching her Morgan fantasy off her list too seems like a good idea when faced with _that_ sobering reality. She puts her drink down on the cocktail table next to her.

“I need to stop drinking. I’ll end up spilling my guts to anyone who’ll listen…”

“Would that be so bad?” he asks and she turns to look at him again. She contemplates telling the three Reids her whole stupid mess.

“Okay, smartypants,” she squints at him accusingly. “Here’s the deal. I’m not upset about sleeping with Hotch, or that it was a mistake, or even that other people on the team might find out that I’m a horny idiot.”

It looks like he’s blushing but the lighting’s so bad and he’s so blurry it’s hard to tell.

“I’m upset that I disappointed myself.”

“Because you slept with a co-worker?” He looks confused.

“Because the fantasy of being with him, or _anyone_ for that matter, is so much better than reality. My fantasies have screwed me over… both literally and figuratively. I’m no better than a sixteen year old kid who’s spent his entire puberty watching online porn and thinks _that’s_ how sex will turn out for him. I’m a delusional fuck-up and I’m smart enough to know it.”

“Oh.” Reid looks to his feet like the correct answer for this conversation is written on them.

“And now I’ve just admitted that all to you so… poof! Another fantasy ruined…” That’s J.J., Hotch, Morgan, and Reid scratched off her list. Maybe she’d win out over this fantasy problem through sheer attrition.

“You have a fantasy about me?”

She looks at him and his eyes seem huge, all six of them.

“I have fantasies about everyone, but they’re not real. That’s the problem. I should want real but I’m addicted to fiction.” She suddenly wonders if she should have admitted to using her friends as mental sex toys. “Not that I’m desperate to hook-up with someone at work or that I want a relationship or anything it’s just… everyone in the unit is so pretty, ya know?”

“That’s true,” he says quietly in the bar’s din. She’s not sure but it seems as though he’s closer to her – their shoulders are almost brushing each other as they lean against the wall. “What are your fantasies like?”

And now she’s looking at him like he just pulled his face off. There’s no way she’s telling him she wanted Hotch to call her a dirty slut while he fucked her from behind or that she came all over Rossi’s face in her mind and he loved it. She’d sooner drink enough to evict her liver from her body.

“You’ve got to be kidding…” she says.

He shrugs, not put off at all. She wonders how drunk _he_ is. “Tell me about the fantasy you had about me.”

“I will not.”

“Why not?” He seems genuinely perplexed, like this isn’t the most ridiculously unsuitable conversation they’ve ever had. “Isn’t that the crux of the issue? How can anyone ever make the fantasy real if you never tell them what you want?”

And then her mind gets really quiet. A small voice asks if her brain is still working, or whether his question just blew it to smithereens. And then that same voice gets really loud as it yells ‘DID HE JUST OFFER TO SORT OUT ONE OF YOUR FANTASIES?’ Something in her kicks into overdrive with the need to push him away. She’s messed up, and clearly has iffy impulse control, and she really doesn’t want to become _that real_ to him. She begins slapping up a mental wall to keep him out before she can think about it.

“And what if the fantasy is about tying you down, making you hurt until you hallucinate from the pain, and then pissing all over your wounds when you beg me to stop?” 

It slides out of her so easily that she has a moment when she thinks she’s been in this business too long. He blinks and she feels horrible that she said it, but it’s for his own good. She needs to protect him from her. But aside from the blink, he doesn’t react at all, not even a blush. After a moment, he shuffles closer to her against the wall and gives her that stare of his that makes her think that he can actually see inside her skull.

“Stop being inflammatory, Emily. We’ve both been at this too long to fall for that,” he murmurs knowingly. “I’d probably have to set one of my doctorates on fire if I believed what you just said. If you really don’t want to tell me - fine. I just thought I’d offer you the opportunity. It seemed like something you might need.”

His words deflate her, smash her hastily built wall into a scatter of chipped bricks. She feels stupid and dirty as well as possibly the worst friend she could’ve dreamed up for Spencer Reid. She needs to go home, puke her guts out, and reevaluate her whole damned life. She knows his eyes are still on her but she can’t make herself look at him. She feels hot all over and then decides she needs to get out of there. She pushes away from the wall but then his hands catch her by her upper arms and hold her still.

“Tell me that this isn’t some half-baked protection impulse.”

Her eyes snap to his face, now less fuzzy because he’s so close, and after a moment he rolls his eyes in response.

“Really? Jeez, Em… that probably means that you have a virginal fantasy about me too, doesn’t it?”

She feels her blush become ferocious and hopes that she won’t throw up all over his shoes.

“Wow. I was sorta half joking with that one,” he mumbles, eyebrows rising again. “That’s just embarrassing for both of us.”

“Tell me about it,” she mutters.

“You’re ten years too late to be my first, Emily, alright?” He sounds a little angry, and then she realizes how insulting her assumptions might appear to him. “And while I love that you care so much, I don’t need protection or defending from… _life_. I’m a grown man, an FBI agent - I can handle things.”

“You’re right, and I know that - I really do. I’m sorry, Reid, so so sorry. I wish we’d never had this conversation…”

“Well, I’m not,” he says quietly and she looks to see his perplexed expression is back again. “I’d rather have a difficult conversation and get these misconceptions cleared up than have you continue to believe that I’m feeble.”

“I don’t think you’re feeble,” she snaps. “The deflowering fantasy was pure fiction and I’ve always known that. Besides, it was just one of them… I haven’t thought about it in a long time…”

She stops in mid-sentence because she’s just admitted more than she intended. His eyes get huge again and his grip on her arms tightens.

“You have more than one?”

“A girl needs variety…” She nervously tries to laugh it off and free herself from his hands at the same time. Christ, she just wants to go home and have a convenient blackout about this.

He lets her go and it’s so unexpected that she stumbles back against the wall to regain her balance. He’s staring at her, an obvious question written across his face that she knows he won’t ask again. This is her out: she can make a beeline for the exit and they’ll both pretend this never happened in the morning, or she can stay and poke the bear, as it were. She’s really torn because neither option seems all that wise, even to her drunk-ass mind. She sighs expansively and it makes her slide closer to him against the wall.

“How drunk are you right now?” she murmurs. He shuffles closer so that she can feel his proximity through his body heat alone.

“Immensely,” he smiles and it goes straight through her like an electric shock. “If you tell me something you regret later on, the booze will be our alibi.”

“And what if I _do_ something that I regret later on?”

He goes completely still, his smile faltering. Then he swallows noticeably and leans in to whisper in her ear.

“You won’t regret it,” he breathes into her hair. “But if that happens, the same escape clause applies.”

“You sure?” she whispers back and tries to control the shiver that runs through her. 

This is such a terrible idea, especially in light of the Hotch fiasco, and yet with every moment that passes it seems more likely to happen. He pulls back a little to meet her eyes and gives her a ‘try me’ expression as his answer, and suddenly she really wants to accept his dare. She’s always been easily goaded into being a sucker; perhaps he knows this about her. The idea that _he_ might be manipulating her for a change shouldn’t feel as hot as it does. She closes the distance between them, making him twitch a little as their lips brush, but they don’t kiss.

“This is a bad idea,” she mimes against his skin.

“I know,” he brushes back.

“So?” Last chance to retreat to a cold shower instead…

“I’ll go hail us a cab.”

“Good boy.”

 

They behave on the ride to his place but that ends the moment they shuffle into his apartment. It feels like the taxi ride was the dam that held them back and without the four tires and the vinyl seats as reminders of propriety, they burst and are all over each other. She doesn’t really know what she expects to happen but the voraciousness of his mouth and hands, the hard insistence of his body against hers certainly takes her by surprise. He’s one of her best friends - probably the best that she’s made in the past decade - and if she were less drunk she’d have a hard time reconciling all of their memories together with the guy who slams her up against his living room wall and pushes into her so forcefully that she imagines she sees stars. She twists and curls around him, his hot, shaking breath against her neck making her wetter than she could imagine. She comes quickly, clumsily, crying out like a banshee, and she blames it all on the booze. It’s not very flattering and he’s probably disappointed, but as she mentally shores herself up to do the walk of shame out to the street, he pulls out and drags her towards what turns out to be the bedroom.

“That’s one,” he gulps, his chest moving like he’s run a marathon.

She tries to ask him what he means but he shushes her and strips them out of their clothes instead. Then she’s pushed back onto the bed and he’s between her thighs licking up her wetness and making a mess of her all over again. He’s aggressive in a way that completely floors her, growling into her core as he licks and sucks and scores her with his teeth. When she comes again, she’s so wound up that she squirts all over him without warning. She’s about to apologize - if she could only remember how words worked - but then she hears him laugh softly against her thigh.

“That’s two,” he chuckles and she moans like she might come again when she realizes what his plan is.

“Jesus, Reid…”

“Spencer,” he mumbles as he wipes himself clean and rises up along her body tracing the outline of it with his tongue. “You should probably call me Spencer…”

She laughs, rolling her whole body into it in a very un-ladylike way as she dives into his mouth trying to suck her taste from his tongue. He moans when she runs her fingers through his hair, her nails biting into the back of his neck to keep him close. His cock is trapped between them leaking across her stomach and her mind is temporarily blown when she thinks that this isn’t some lucky pick-up from a bar - this is someone she knows and trusts who just also happens to be secretly hot. He’s like something she dreamed up…

He pulls away from her lips with a gasp, flushed and grinning in that way he has that can win almost anyone over. “Did you call me Reid in your fantasies? Seems sorta formal…”

Her mind and body are buzzing, going in half a dozen directions at once thanks to the alcohol and him, but she can’t for the life of her remember if she called him _anything_ in her fantasies. In fact, the fictional details of those escapades are pretty hard to call up at all in their current situation. It’s like his cock and mouth have given her temporary amnesia.

“Dunno. Don’t remember.”

His smile gets even bigger and then he whispers, “That’s fine. We’ll wing it.”

And _then_ it hits her right between the eyes what he’s just accomplished. He’s a fucking genius.

She kisses him hard then, and his body goes taut at her sudden attention. His hands and mouth roam, mapping her meticulously. He pinches and strokes, rolls and bites. She heaves against him, rising and falling as his hands and her body create some sort of alchemy together. He fingers her to climax again but takes his time with it until it’s almost painful when it happens. She gets a little revenge back when she lets him fuck her mouth but pinches off his orgasm as it’s about to break. They flip back and forth, wordlessly taking turns at ruining one another until both of their bodies start to get careless and worn out. It goes on for hours. She loses track of how many times she’s come, though she’s vaguely aware that he’s still counting them off when they happen. Eventually, she wins the battle and finally breaks him. He’s behind her, glued to her from thighs to shoulders like a second skin as he cries out, shaking and slicked with sweat as he throbs into her over and over. She crows her victory but then collapses a second afterwards, used up in a way she hasn’t experienced since college. He follows her moments later, flopping down into the mattress with a creak. Then she nudges him, silently rolling him to his back, and drapes herself next to him not caring if it’s the last movement she ever coaxes her muscles into making. They need showers and water and ibuprofen for their impending hangovers, but instead they grunt like zombies and sink into the sleep of the dead together.

 

When she wakes, the sun is already high and she has no idea where she is for an instant. In all the years that she and Reid have been friends, she’s never seen his bedroom. Until last night. It’s not like her to sleep so deeply in someone else’s bed but when she makes a move to get up, she gets an idea why it happened this time. She’s exhausted and incredibly sore; sex marathons are for people younger than she. And then the headache blooms like a mushroom cloud over everything.

“Fuck,” she mutters, holding her head. 

Then she realizes that she’s alone in the bed. It occurs to her with a pinch of sadness that she’s probably overstayed her welcome. Reid isn’t the type of guy to toss a woman out, but still… she ought to make herself scarce. That, and she has no idea what sort of morning-after-the-night-before conversation to expect from him. Their evening turned out better than she could’ve imagined but that doesn’t imply anything. She needs to put some distance between them for their own good. She’s relieved to discover an ensuite bathroom and makes herself as presentable as she can. And she also swallows down three over-the-counter painkillers she finds in Reid’s medicine cabinet. Taking as deep a breath as she can without exploding her head even further, she pads out into the living room.

Reid’s in his kitchen, dressed and looking just like he always does - no worse for wear. She’s momentarily jealous of his normality until her footsteps announce her and he gets up and gestures that she should take a seat at the counter. His movements are careful and he winces as he slides off his stool; she’s not sure if it’s a headache or the enthusiastic fingering she gave him last night, but she’s a little happier knowing that he’s suffering as well. 

“Coffee?” he says gently.

“Oh yeah,” she moans and he smiles when he passes her a mug that she cradles to her chest like a sacred relic.

A full minute of charged silence happens while she pretends to be interested in the contents of his spice rack as she desperately tries to find something to talk about.

“Do you want to talk about last night?” he finally asks. She turns to look at him and finds his face is carefully neutral.

“Do _you_?” she counters.

He shrugs. “I was going to follow your lead on this. I figured since you’re still here…”

“Yeah, I’m sorry about that. I didn’t mean to treat your place like a Motel 6.”

He steps towards her and concern leaks into his manicured expression. “I don’t mind that you’re here, Emily. But I also wouldn’t have been offended if I woke up alone this morning. You don’t owe me anything. Whatever you feel you should do now is fine.”

She stares at him trying to determine if he’s holding something back, and maybe he sees it and decides to be honest to save her the trouble. “I’m just happy it happened.”

A smile crooks up the left side of his mouth and it makes her smile back. She breathes out, low and relieved. “I’m happy it happened too.”

“Good. Let’s not make it weird then. Deal?”

“Deal,” she grins and slurps her coffee. He made it just how she likes it and she wonders if that was automatic for him or something purposeful. “I gotta say, you’re blowing my mind a little with all of this.”

He’s half turned back to refill his coffee mug, and he arches an eyebrow at her questioningly.

“Well… I mean, impressive, drunken sexcapade aside, I didn’t really expect you to be this… I dunno, _laid back_ about it afterwards?”

He twitches a little, like his muscles are bothering him or his head just pinged painfully, but she doubts that it’s either of those things. “You think I’m being laid back?”

“I never would’ve pegged you as a casual sex guy, Reid.” She wonders if she should still call him Spencer or not. She shakes the thought away; this probably won’t happen again and people at work would notice the change, so… “I figured you for the type who’d want to pull it apart and examine it afterwards.”

He blinks and then shoots his gaze to his feet. The gesture is so typically Reid that it’s a rude wake-up call to her after all of the surprises of the past twelve hours.

“I just want whatever makes you comfortable,” he mumbles. That’s very Reid too and it sort of breaks her heart a little. She walks up to him and slides an arm around his waist, squeezing gently until his eyes meet hers again.

“If you’re comfortable, I’m comfortable. It’s a two-way street, okay?”

He nods but doesn’t look convinced.

“Do you want to talk about anything?” she asks.

She feels his body go tense under her hands and he seems to stand straighter. “No.”

She wonders what that was all about but figures that if he says he doesn’t want to talk, she can’t force him. And honestly, her reserves are pretty much gone after last night - all she wants is to go home and sleep for the day. Thank goodness they don’t have to go into the office for anything.

“Well, if that changes,” She leans in and kisses him lightly. His cheek heats under her lips. “You need to tell me, okay?”

“Okay.”

He nods and she slips away from him, placing her mug on the countertop. It feels like the right time to leave and she needs to make this happen before another awkward moment blooms between them.

“I think I’d better go. I need a shower, and a nap… I feel a little like a cranky baby right now.”

She smiles, tries to make it light, and he nods and walks her to his front door. He doesn’t say goodbye; he just leans in and gives her one of the softest kisses she’s ever received. It’s so different from last night that it leaves her stunned and a little breathless. She suddenly wants to pull him close, tell him she’s sorry if she’s somehow hurt him. And then she hears his voice in her head scolding her about wanting to protect him all the time…

“Okay. See ya, Reid.”

“Bye, Emily.”

When she’s out on the street, she realizes that all of her Reid fantasies were way off base except for one detail: he makes her feel wrung out and emotional.

 

He’s absolutely fine at work. They go back to the way they were and no one even asks them about how or why they disappeared from the bar that night. She doesn’t think about Hotch anymore or about her profusion of inappropriate fantasies, and that in itself is a huge relief to her. 

She is thinking more about Reid though. She’s paying greater attention to his often inscrutable case insights, she’s watching him interact with people realizing that he’s so much better at it than he used to be, and yes, she’s catching herself appreciating his ass. But that’s not entirely her fault. Somewhere in the last six years, Reid must have found a tailor because his clothes fit him much better than they used to, and she can’t believe that she’s never noticed how his suits make him appear long and lean and cool. She catches herself thinking these things and then forces herself to stop. It’s just another form of fantasizing; she’s taking their one night together and fashioning a new narrative in her mind, the only difference is that it’s not entirely fictional this time. She doesn’t want to do that - she needs everything about him to be real. She’s also seeing the pitfalls of sleeping with a friend. There were already feelings involved - because she’s always cared for him - and now they are intensified. She’s having a difficult time trying to be objective about how he makes her startle now when he appears beside her or how warm she feels when he smiles. She needs to separate out their friendship from this because one night of sex can’t be allowed to change anything especially when it won’t happen again.

But then it does. It’s Garcia’s birthday and they are all belting out karaoke tunes in some dive bar in the District and drinking too many cocktails with tiny umbrellas in them. Just when she feels the need to go home and keep the evening all flushed and happy, he walks her from the club to hail a cab and ends up kissing her like he’ll never see her again. Forty minutes later they are fumbling in the dark of her condo, knocking over furniture and trying to get out of their clothes the wrong way before they try their best to out-do their one, previous encounter. Afterwards, as they lay strewn across her bed, half of him draping off the mattress and her legs tangled in the rucked up sheets, he murmurs something about trying to do this sober. She finds herself nodding silently against his chest and her stomach clenches in terror.

He’s her friend. She’s not looking for anything more. Sex shouldn’t feel like this. _God, please don’t let me turn him into a fetish…_

He’s gone when she wakes up but he leaves a note by the bed that makes her grin and immediately erases her knee-jerk reaction to being disposable. She tucks the note into the back of the book she’s reading in an uncharacteristic display of sentimentality. And when she goes back to work, they are the same as they’ve always been.

 

Weeks go by and after a while she wonders if he even remembers what he said that night. Her fit of emotion about them starts to look foolish and phantasmagorical, so she puts it away like the note in the back of her novel on the nightstand. Then, after a long Friday of writing up reports, he asks her to dinner. It’s nothing unusual - they still do it all the time with no awkward subtext - and they go to a diner that they both like and end up talking about work just like always. When they head for their cars, he pauses her with a hand on her arm and looks like he might swallow his own tongue as he murmurs, “Would you like to come over?” It’s not like their previous nights; they’re both nervous and hesitant and completely sober. He’s a lot more like the friend she’s known for years and she’s a lot less recklessly casual with him. But the ache is still there stretching tight between them, and as they both calm down the intensity resurfaces, hot and immediate and surprising. They take their time bringing each other to the brink, all heated gasps and slicked skin and quiet moans. But they don’t say a word this time. After he comes down, he takes her mouth like it’s an excuse for not speaking, his hands tracing the lines of her face in tickling worship. It feels like a conversation but she’s struggling to understand. She’s on the verge of saying something potentially fatal. It’s building up in her, pushing at her larynx trying to pop out of her without her permission. Basically, the whole situation has become scary as hell because it doesn’t make any sense to her at all. It’s _just sex_ , right?!?

“What are we doing?” she whispers, and this incandescent look he has drains out of him instantly. She feels like she’s stabbed him and sliced herself open on the blade at the same time. He rolls away.

“You don’t have to stay.”

“That’s not what I meant.” She sits up quickly, sheets pooling around her waist. “And I think it’s a valid question, don’t you?”

“I guess I don’t know what we’re doing. I thought I did, but now I’m not so sure.”

“What does _that_ mean?” She’s talking to his back as he sits on the edge of the bed. She hates that he won’t look at her for this conversation.

“It means that I can’t tell you how to feel about this, Emily. You’ll just have to decide for yourself.”

That pretty much puts the kibosh on the rest of the evening, so she dresses quickly and leaves without saying goodbye. And the following Monday at the office they are _exactly_ the same as they were before. It’s enough to drive a woman mental.

 

They never bring it up and he never asks her over again. He doesn’t even ask her out for a friendly dinner. It could just be because their caseload gets busier, or it could be that she’s actually hurt him like she feared. What she doesn’t expect at all is that _she_ feels hurt by it even though they continue working together without a hitch. She decides that she needs to stop getting so wound up about sex; if he really had a problem with her, it would have manifested on the job by now. But he’s fine and she needs to get over it, just like she got over Hotch and lots of other guys who came and went in her life. As time passes though, she finds that it bothers her more, not less, and she’s almost obsessively watching him. When he occasionally sees her doing it, she shrugs it off but deep inside she feels the shame of a teenager caught in an unrealistic crush. It just seems _so stupid_ ; she can’t stop thinking about him.

 

They work a case where the UnSub turns out to be a paranoid schizophrenic. When he’s caught they need a confession to bring the case home and everyone looks to Reid like it’s his job description to use his personal traumas as crime fighting tools. She hates that. She hates that everyone walks on eggshells around Morgan during child sex cases or J.J. around the mention of suicides, but no one thinks twice about asking Reid to manipulate a mentally ill suspect or a junkie for the team’s benefit. He doesn’t hesitate though. He just reads up on the guy’s case history and locks himself in the interrogation room with him until he pulls every last detail from his fractured mind. The guy will never see daylight again. He’ll rot in a state-run secure hospital ward anesthetized beyond all recognition for something that was brought on by a disease rather than a choice. And Reid knows he’s done that to him.

When the interview’s done, she watches him. He’s subdued and quiet in that way he gets when something has gotten past his defenses. This wave of need flushes over her, so fundamental and affectionate that it leaves her quietly gasping. She knows that he doesn’t want to be coddled, but she also understands his pressure points and that he’s probably hurting a little right now. She tries to rein it all in, pack it away, when his gaze flicks over to her and he sees something that stops him dead. He just stares at her as she hastily tries to scrounge up a mask of professional concern, but the way his stare sharpens tells her that she’s failed miserably. _Crap._

He cocks his head slightly as he continues watching her and she feels like she’s becoming a decrypted cipher under his gaze. Without fabricating a pretense for leaving, she just stands from her desk and walks towards the hallway that leads away from the main bullpen. It feels like he’s following her but she doesn’t look back to check. She tries to resist the urge to pick up speed, to run from him and everything he _thinks_ he might have seen. She passes the washrooms and the entrance to the locker room - she doesn’t know where she’s going but she’s running out of options. The last room at the end of the hall is the BAU cold case storage. Paper files from the early days of the department grow moldy there; no one sets foot in that room unless someone demands an original case file that Garcia hasn’t digitized. Emily grips the door handle like a lifeline - there’s nowhere else to go. She turns back to see if he’s there and when she does, she watches him stop and stare at her down the length of the hallway. She holds his eyes for a moment and she’s not sure if she’s warning him off or begging for his understanding, but whatever’s on her face makes him stare at her like he did that night at the bar. Her stomach churns and she ducks into the file room, shutting him out. She takes a couple of fortifying breaths and waits. The room is quiet; at the end of a corridor few people ever use… No footsteps follow her. She waits another minute but when nothing happens she sags against the dusty table at the center of the room, leaning heavily on braced arms as she tries to come back to herself. _What the hell was that about?_

The door opens behind her and then quickly clicks shut. She turns just as his arms slide around her and pull her close, and then he’s kissing her, breathless and hungry like there hasn’t been a two-month gap of indecision between when he last did it and now. Her hands rise up, sink into his hair, and he moans all wanton and needy that it barely makes sense with the friend she knows. She can’t think straight when he does things like that, and while her mind flails around for the correct response, her body arches up into his and she moans back into his mouth. He pulls away, blinking and with a worried V to his eyebrows.

“Spencer,” she murmurs before he can say anything. She hasn’t used his first name since their last night together. It seemed too dangerous to try, and she has evidence of that now when his gaze darkens and his grip tightens as he hears it.

“Need you.” His voice is low and hoarse, like it hurts him to admit it, and just like that she’s wet.

“I know,” she bites his lips. “It’s okay.”

“Are you sure? I never would’ve asked, but the way you were looking at me-” His mouth is pressed into her throat, his voice aching as his hands make a liar out of his good intentions.

“Christ, Spencer, just take me,” she hisses, and then he’s lifting her onto the table and pushing her back with a firm hand against her chest. She hums something that sounds a lot like a gratified ‘yes’ as he makes a tortured noise in his throat. Then his hands roughly grab at her dress pants before she feels cool air against her bare ass.

“Emily,” he growls as he pulls away and she reaches for him to get his heat back. Then she feels his fingers trace through her wetness, and it jolts her hard enough to knock her gracelessly back to the tabletop. “God, you’re already so wet… did I do that to you?”

“Spencer…”

“Hold on.”

His hands leave her and she whimpers, but then she hears a zipper and the rustle of fabric. A moment later his fingers bite into her hips as he drags her to the edge of the table and onto his cock. He’s impatient, pushing into her fast and forcing himself deep too quickly. She gasps loudly, trying to adjust, and then she feels him stretch out along her chest until his lips brush against one ear.

“This is what you do to me,” he whispers.

“Holy fuck,” she cries as her eyes roll back into her head and he sets up a brutal, punishing rhythm.

He thrusts hard and fast, not giving her time to react or recover. All she can do is hold on. Her hands find his hips and dig in, encouraging his pace and delighting in the strain of his muscles. She’s gasping as he forces air out of her with the press of his body. In time she realizes that he’s gasping in tandem with her, like they are one throbbing, pulsing unit trying to figure out what the extreme limit of their tolerance is. He almost pulls out completely on each thrust and then pushes back so deeply that it feels like her entire lower body rocks in the shockwave from it. She’s already so full of him, but she pulls her thighs up making her tighter, and they both cry out at the same time. Her hands have slipped from his waist to his ass, gripping the fantastic flex and swell of it as his movements have freed him from his pants a little more.

“Need this,” he reiterates, and she hushes him with a quick ‘I know’. “No… need this… with you. Only want this with you.”

And the flush of need heats her all over again. But it’s not just his need this time. She understands that she _wants_ him to need her. There’s power in it and that makes her hot, but there’s also that protective tenderness that they both share as well. She wants to be the one he comes to when things fall apart, she wants to be the one he trusts to either talk or fuck it out of him, depending on what he needs. She wants to be the only one he looks to for that. The feel of him moving in her, the frantic sound of his breathing, the desperate way he holds her as if she’d disappear if he let go, the strange way he sways from tender to rough and back again… Something scary and irrational bubbles up and swells in her.

“Whatever you need, Spencer…”

“What?” he whines against her throat and manages to infuse it with as much incredulity as one word can muster.

“You can have what you need. Just ask.”

She can barely believe that she’s said it when he pulls back to look at her and she sees that he can barely believe it as well. Then he swoops in and gives her a kiss that could make you forget your name. She opens up under him, pulls him in with a groan that’s bone-deep, and then loops her thighs around his waist and squeezes. His rhythm stutters and then his hands are twisting in her hair has his body contorts and he half shouts into their kiss. She squeezes him so tight that he can’t move, can’t thrust out his release like he wants and instead is forced to hitch and throb inside her. She can feel the reckless waves of it pressing into all of her that’s used and tender, and then she’s gone too. She cries once, shaky and relieved, and then he’s rocking them through the end of it, curling her face to nestle against his neck. She calls his name once and again, and then his lips find hers. He keeps kissing her softly, giving and taking like a slow tide as he pulls out and folds her against him. He’s stroking her hair and the edge of her cheek and the line of her throat while his lips caress her, and it builds up in her like a cloudburst of longing that she never knew she possessed. He says her name and suddenly she’s choking out “whatever you need” again like it’s the most important thing she’s ever had to tell him. Somewhere hovering above their creased, fucked-out, intimate mess is a part of herself that’s watching it unfold in disbelief and wondering _what the hell just happened?_

 

Things get a little complicated after that.

There’s a case in San Diego with seven dead ex-cons, a vigilante killer, and a local detective named Michaels who hits on her the moment he meets her and just won’t take a hint. It’s not like this hasn’t happened before but it’s professionally aggravating and personally upsetting because Reid is front and center for all of it. They haven’t had a private moment since the revelation in cold case storage and she’s unsure of where they stand now. The whole thing is getting messier and messier, and she doesn’t have the luxury of time to figure it out. All she knows is that Michaels’ juvenile advances are pissing her off and making her worried that they might change the way Reid sees her. After all, Michaels bears more than a passing resemblance to Mick Rawson and _everyone_ knows that something happened with him. She can’t tell the jerk where to shove his innuendo because of the case, and she spends too much time watching Reid on the sly to gage his reaction. The annoying part is that he doesn’t react at all - not on the surface anyway. He doesn’t interfere or get aggressive or melt into the background. He acts like he’s blind to it. Part of her is happy that he’s not trotting out some tired, chauvinistic response, but a primal part of her is also pissed that he doesn’t seem to care enough to challenge the detective. When she realizes that she’s actively manufacturing drama about this and sidetracking her brain from a difficult case, she shuts it all down in a way only someone with an unhealthy ability to compartmentalize can. She’ll deal with it later.

Later comes sooner than she thinks. They’ve been there a week and are no closer to having any kind of suspect in their sights. The local LEOs are less than helpful, even after separating Michaels from the mix, because the victims are all cons on parole and there’s a strong, unspoken sentiment that the killer is doing the world a favor. But a new victim is found - a sailor from the naval base - and now JAG wants to send in their own investigators and take over the case although it’s obvious that they’re only concerned about their murdered seaman. Everyone’s strung out, Hotch is stressed enough to allow more than one inflection in his voice, and Michaels _still_ won’t let up. They just really need a break in the case.

Hotch tells the team to get some rest just before he puts in yet another call to the Attorney General about this clusterfuck. Michaels takes this as an opportunity to abandon subtlety entirely.

“So, Emily… the boss has given you a night off,” he grins. Beside him, Reid is packing up his bag and acting like he’s the Bureau’s first deaf profiler.

“Not really,” she says flatly. Honestly, how many different ways can she say ‘no’? “We don’t turn the case off just because we’re off the clock.”

“Of course, of course,” Michaels soothes as he steps into her personal space. “You guys wouldn’t be the best if you did, right? All I’m saying is that you don’t have to hang out here with the fluorescent lighting and the vending machine food.”

“True.” Reid’s shoulders twitch as she says it and it’s the first and only time he’s reacted to anything passing between her and Michaels.

“So, why don’t you let me treat you to dinner? We can talk about the case… maybe bouncing some ideas off a fresh set of ears could be helpful.” He leans against the desk she’s using getting right in her face with his stupid grin. “And you get some great seafood out of it to boot. No one knows the best, secret places like a local…”

Reid swings his messenger bag over his shoulder and heads to the elevators without a word. He passes a patrolwoman who’s watching Michaels and Emily with interest, then she flicks her eyes away. Emily watches Reid leave and tries to suppress the urge to call after him. When she turns back to collect her things, she realizes that Michaels isn’t looking at her for once and there’s a blush that, if she didn’t know better, resembles shame on his face.

“So how ‘bout it?” he rallies. “We could break this case wide open.”

“You don’t care about breaking the case, Michaels,” she says distractedly. 

Something is niggling at her but she can’t pin it down. The truth is, she really could use some dinner and conversation, and there is the possibility that it could unblock her thoughts about this case. She picks up her bag and case notes, and turns away from Michaels without another word jogging towards the elevators. She makes it just as the cab doors are closing and calls out. Long fingers block the closing doors and the whole thing buzzes angrily as the doors slide open again to let her in. Reid stares at her wide-eyed but says nothing as she thanks him and he presses the door close button. The cab descends and they stand shoulder to shoulder in silence. She turns and he’s still staring at her, then she reaches out, cups his jaw, and draws him in for a soft kiss.

“Dinner?” she whispers when their lips part. He looks so confused she almost starts laughing.

“Sure,” he murmurs back.

But dinner never really happens. They go back to his room so that he can drop off all the things he’s carrying, and before they know it they’re making out, and then she has him naked, stretched out across his bed and she’s riding him like her life depends on it. He still looks confused, but also flushed and deliriously surprised so she’s not worrying about it. He’s unbelievably hard, rubbing her and groaning like he’s close but she’s struggling for friction, slipping over him too easily because she’s so wet. She gets an idea.

“Every time he makes a stupid pass at me, I want to feel you like this.” She leans forward, brushing his lips with hers as he strains, gasping below her. He moans her name, long and low, and it makes her shiver along his cock.

“Didn’t know… if I was allowed to be jealous…” he grits out as he thrusts up into her body.

“You don’t seriously think I’d let that snake near me, do you? Just the idea of him would turn my cunt to sandpaper.” She tucks her knees beneath her and rises up arching her back in the process and giving him a whole new angle as she sinks down again. He moans loud enough that she worries it might be heard in the hallway. “Why would you think that when you do _this_ to me?”

His hands flash to her hips and draw her down onto him forcefully. His abdomen is flexing, his legs stretching and skimming along the sheets as he tries to contain himself. He’s panting, eyes flicking from where they join, to her swaying breasts, to her stare, and back again.

“ ‘M close, Em. Stop talking… I-I can’t…”

“You shouldn’t be jealous,” she continues, egging him on with a grin until he loses it. “Because when I close my eyes it’s your sweat on my skin, your teeth at my throat, your lips with my taste on them, your fingers and your mouth and your tangled hair, it’s your cock so deep inside me I can barely catch my breath-”

He cries out and arches his spine so violently that they both lift from the mattress. He fucks up into her again and again, mindlessly as he moans out his pleasure. She laughs, dark and throaty, and then leans back to give them their sharpest angle yet and it’s just enough, hits her just right as she feels the wave of heat roll out from her core and sear up her body. When she comes back, blinking and panting, he’s collected her up against him, her head tucked under his chin as he strokes her back and tries to catch his breath.

“I said… _stop_ talking…” he murmurs between huffs. She laughs into the base of his throat.

“Quit complaining. It all worked out, didn’t it?”

“Hmmmm.”

He pulls her down, propping himself against the headboard as she lays out stretching an arm and a leg over him lazily. She feels his lips graze her temple, linger there longer than just an idle peck, and she closes her eyes and enjoys the rush of warmth that it sends through her. She hums distractedly against his chest; she has no right to feel this good in the middle of such a frustrating case.

“Michaels is a douche bag,” he mumbles eventually and she has to stifle her amusement at his terminology. “I don’t like him, and I don’t like that Hotch hasn’t said anything to him about his behavior.”

“ _You_ haven’t said anything about it either…”

“It’s not my place.” He tenses a little as he says it. “Hotch is your boss. He has a right to interfere.”

“A right to interfere?” She rises up on an elbow to look at him. “Not your place?!?”

She’s about to get into it with him when that niggling feeling comes back to her and suddenly explodes inside her head. She’s watching his mouth move but she can’t hear what he’s saying. Pictures from the past week are flicking through her head like a slide show, assembling all of the pieces into an order that makes sense. She feels Reid shift underneath her and when she brings his face back into focus there’s a worried crease between his eyebrows and he’s waiting on her like he’s asked her a question she didn’t hear.

“What is it?” he says.

“Your place. _His_ place,” she mumbles like the fragment will explain everything. She shakes her head and sits up placing her hands out in a ‘wait a minute’ gesture. “Michaels has been hitting on me hard. I mean, it’s neither subtle nor sophisticated.”

“It sure isn’t,” Reid growls.

“Well, don’t you think he’s been trying _too hard_? He’s old enough to have experience and to exercise a little more flare. Also, I don’t think I’ve given him any reason to hope. But he keeps going at it with the same intensity regardless.”

Reid blinks. “Maybe he’s an obsessive personality, or a narcissist. Maybe he can’t read your non-verbal cues.”

“But that’s the thing. I made the same assumptions, but this evening I saw him display shame and it was really obvious.”

“Shame? To whom?”

“That pretty patrolwoman who’s been hanging around since we arrived. You passed her on the way out tonight. She looked right at him while he was asking me to dinner and when I looked back at him he was flushed and couldn’t make eye contact either her or me. I was so pissed at him that I didn’t recognize it right away: he’s seeing her, or he _was_ seeing her and is still hung up on her.”

“Then why hit on you so aggressively?”

She stares him down, serious as a heart attack. “J.J.’s married and the rest of the team members are male. I was his only choice.”

Reid takes a beat and she can almost see the moment when he puts it all together. This frisson of excitement flashes through her that he gets it without further explanation. Then he jumps out of bed and starts hopping into his pants. “We need to wake up Hotch. Now.”

“Waitwaitwait…” she tries to stop him. “Hotch is gonna wonder why we were up so late… together.”

Reid stands still for a moment, his shirt drooping from his hand. Then he runs his fingers through his tangled hair, which doesn’t sort it out one bit. 

“Let him wonder,” he shrugs. “The possibility that Michaels is our vigilante and has inserted himself into this investigation is too important. It could be Foyet all over again and I don’t like that he’s fixated on you. Besides, doesn’t Hotch owe you a pass anyway? For your past… you know…”

Reid makes a weird hand gesture and blushes furiously. Emily doesn’t know if she should be offended or impressed that Reid has obliquely suggested they use Hotch’s indiscretion as leverage to cover their asses.

“I really don’t advise that you bring that up,” she huffs but gets out of bed and dresses with him.

Five minutes later they are at Hotch’s hotel door, rumpled and babbling, then ten minutes after that they’re with the team in the lobby getting Garcia to track Michaels’ phone and trying to wake up a SWAT unit. 

Despite their brainwave, it doesn’t end cleanly. Michaels gets a heads up from someone and runs. Jurisdictional authority gets muddied between the local LEOs, SWAT, and the naval criminal investigators who show up on the scene just in time to screw with the manhunt. Michaels gets hemmed in at a house just outside of the city and even though SWAT clears the building, he manages to circle back once they leave and it’s just the team there waiting for CSU to arrive. 

Why it’s Reid who always manages to get taken hostage is a mystery to Emily, but she doesn’t really think about it as she hears Michaels’ demands over Reid’s field mic. Her body goes numb. She’s weightless. She can’t feel her limbs or clothes or gun as she stands next to Hotch and the others listening to the negotiation. All of the talk is pointless: Michaels isn’t escaping, and no doubt Michaels knows it too. That means he either surrenders or he kills Reid to cover his escape in the ensuing chaos. Michaels is a cop, and a moral revenge killer - there’s no way he thinks he’s getting out of this. He’s just waiting for the news trucks to arrive for his big finale. Of course, the whole team knows this and they’re using the delay to figure out another scenario, but that’s not good enough for her. 

No one knows how much she’s changed. They don’t hear the frantic tattoo of her pulse at every radio crackle, every ammo check. None of them see her the way Reid does. They don’t know her with all of her flaws, and still want to be near her. They haven’t snuck inside her and figured out how she ticks. They haven’t lit her up and surprised her and become important to her in a completely new way. Not a single one of them needs her the way Reid does, and they certainly don’t know that _she needs him to need her._

She wants to run into the house but realizes that someone would stop her. So she marshals the sliver of sense that she still possesses instead and sneaks away from the cordon to find a way into the building using trees to cover her approach. She’ll probably get fired for this if she doesn’t die in the process. She creeps in through the back, finds her way to the living room where she can hear Michaels talking to Hotch over Reid’s mic. She edges into view. Michaels has his back to her looking out through the home’s picture window to the cop cars beyond. He’s got Reid’s Kevlar on so that SWAT can’t take him out without making a perfect headshot. He’s got a Glock pressed to Reid’s head, Reid’s body has gone lax from the strain and the knowledge that there isn’t a single move he can make that’s faster than one of Michaels’ bullets. Emily swallows hard and accepts the challenge. She silently steps up behind Michaels with her gun aimed at the base of his skull. Michaels blocks her from view; Hotch won’t have a clue she’s there until she speaks.

“Michaels,” she murmurs and nearly has a heart attack when he twitches violently at the sound of her voice. Reid’s body tenses too and his head twists as much as he can in Michaels’ grip as he tries to see her. 

“Emily,” Michaels attempts to sound calm. “Here for my last hurrah. That’s more considerate than I thought you were capable of being.”

He’s still facing the window even though he must know she’s behind him. Over Reid’s mic she can hear Hotch call out ‘Prentiss?’ and then ‘Standby… Everyone standby. We have an agent in the house’.

“C’mon, Michaels, there isn’t going to be a grand finale. You and I both know it. There’s just people getting dead. What’s the point in that?”

“Sounds fine by me.”

“Emily…” Reid warns gently an instant before Michaels yanks him closer and tells him to shut up.

She closes the distance and presses the mussel of her gun to the back of Michaels’ neck. He stiffens when she leans in close enough to whisper in his ear. She knows she should negotiate - she has the upper hand now - but her patience has been obliterated by fear. She wants this over, now, and if she has to break every rule there is to get Reid out of this house in one piece then she’s lining them all up to destroy them in an efficient manner.

“If you even think about twitching that trigger,” she whispers hoping that she can’t be heard over the mic. “I’m putting a bullet where your spine meets your skull at 2500 feet per second. Think you can outmaneuver that, you bush league, immoral fucktwit? You’ll be dead from the neck down before you can even finish working out what happened. I might just do it anyway, even if you don’t twitch, because the man you’re holding a gun on is so much better than you that it’s an insult to the species to consider negotiating his release with an irrelevant piece of shit like you. Some things just aren’t worth the waste of oxygen.”

She cocks her weapon for effect. Reid sucks in a shocked breath and whispers “Em, don’t…” and she can’t figure out why.

“Sounds like you’ve got a thing for him, Agent,” Michaels laughs nervously. “Seems like I took the right guy.”

“And if I did, wouldn’t that make me a lot more unstable than the cops outside, Michaels? Wouldn’t that mean that I’d do anything to save him? Even murder?” She digs the gun mussel into his neck until he growls and then she hisses through clenched teeth. “Wouldn’t you do anything for that patrol cop you didn’t want me to notice?”

Michaels breathes in sharply.

“Yeah, I saw her,” Emily continues. “And I swear to you - _I swear_ \- if you kill Dr. Reid I will take out every inch of my grief on that pretty, unsuspecting thing of yours. Even if you’re dead and I can’t show it to you, I’ll make it so intricate, so horrible you’ll feel the guilt of it in the afterlife. I’ve been at this job a long time… seen a lot of shit. I know _exactly_ how to do it.”

“You wouldn’t,” Michaels barks. “You’re a fucking cop!”

“So were you, asshole, so were you. We’ve all got hate in us and if you make the wrong choice now, you will have earned all of mine. Now, CHOOSE.” She presses the gun into his neck one last time. “Will it be your life you sacrifice, or hers?”

Michaels huffs loudly, like a spoiled kid who won’t get his way and resents it, and that reaction almost makes her pull the trigger. If she had to go to prison for something, eliminating this piece of crap from the bottom of humanity’s shoe might be worth it. But a second later he loosens his grip on his service piece and Emily snatches it and slewfoots Michaels to the floor face first. Reid stumbles away but she’s too focused on cuffing Michaels (and _cuffing_ him as she thumps him hard with the butt of her gun) to pay the proper attention. She calls out ‘suspect in custody’ loud enough to be heard over the mic, and then sags back onto her knees and shudders. She hears the SWAT guys’ boots mounting the stairs out front and then quickly looks over to Reid. He’s collapsed into a chair watching her wide-eyed and gape-mouthed - it sort of looks like he’s horrified. A chill slices across her skin at that look and she whispers “I’m sorry, Spencer” just as the SWAT guys storm the room and Hotch appears and emergency services whisk Reid away.

It feels like hours before she gets out of that crappy bungalow, but it’s probably only been twenty minutes. Hotch is angrier than she’s ever seen him - he’s probably angrier than anyone has seen him before. She’s on paid leave until, as he puts it, he _‘loses the urge to shoot her’_. He doesn’t mention anything about her and Reid, so either he didn’t hear it or he’s writing up one employee infraction at a time. She steps out of the house into the weak sunshine feeling shaky and a little naked without her badge and gun, and a paramedic walks up and shuffles her over to a waiting ambulance. She answers questions and allows herself to be examined but it’s all kind of a fog to her. After a while, she looks around but can’t see anyone she recognizes. She wonders if everyone will distance themselves until OPR decides what to do with her.

“Are you okay?”

She looks up and he’s right there, right next to her holding her elbow firmly in his hand. He seems worried and like he’s trying to keep his fear in check, and she wonders if he’ll always be a little afraid of her now. Even if he backs away like the rest of them, she’s so relieved to see him and so delirious he’s all right that she thinks her legs might give out on her. Instead, she pulls him against her and he huffs in surprise. She grips him tight, clamps her eyes shut, and just holds on in silence for a minute. She rocks them a little and he lets her.

“I didn’t know where you were,” she says when she finally backs away. “I didn’t know if you were alright…”

“Em, are _you_ okay?” he asks again, bending a little to meet her eyes.

“Probably gonna get fired. Or worse. Hotch is working up to skinning me alive…” Her bottom lip is trembling and she tells herself _‘no! no breaking down…’_

“Emily…” He sounds exasperated and she can’t believe that’s all it takes to break her.

“I’m sorry, Spencer. I’m sorry that I let you down.” She grabs his jacket sleeve to steady herself but it does nothing to take the wavering from her voice. “I just couldn’t let it happen. I know that you can take care of yourself and that we all make a choice when we agree to this work, but… I couldn’t let him take you. I couldn’t live with it if he killed you.”

“But Em,” he says carefully. “What you did-”

“I know, I know, but it was worth it. If I lose my job, it’s worth it because you made it out of there. No regrets. No regrets…”

He holds her arm in silence for a long moment. She can’t look at him but she’s grateful for the reprieve so that she can get her breathing under control.

“The things you said to Michaels,” he murmurs eventually. “Did you mean all of that?”

“I wish I could tell you I didn’t.” She still can’t look at him. “I guess that’s just who I am. Probably not who you imagined me to be but… there you go. I know I’ve let you down, Spence. I know you expected me to be a better person-”

“What do you think I expect from you?” he whispers angrily.

“You probably expect me to be less comfortable with the idea of murder, for one thing,” she snaps. “You probably expect me to fall back on the angels of my better nature or something in situations like that.”

“We’re all a lot more comfortable with murder than we should be, Emily.”

“Oh yeah? Would _you_ threaten an innocent life to save me?”

“I’d threaten the whole damned planet to save you.”

Her eyes lock to his and he’s giving her the most brutally serious glare she’s ever seen on him.

“It’s not something I’m proud of,” he says quietly. “But it’s the truth.”

“So… you’re not… disappointed?”

“Disappointed? No. Angry? Yes.”

“Angry?”

“I’m angry because you put _everything_ at risk in there. Not just you, or me, or your job… but things about you that you hadn’t even told me. Like how you value me enough to commit a felony. I really feel that you should’ve let me in on that little piece of information _before_ there was a gun aimed at my head.”

She looks away because, of course, he’s right: she should’ve been brave enough to admit part of it to him at least. But she was too busy concocting erotic fictions in her head and not needing real people and trying to prevent him from seeing how screwed up and unglamorous she is.

“Emily, no one’s really the person they display to the world,” he continues when she remains silent. “Did you ever ask yourself why I approached you that first night and pried so insistently?”

She looks up at him then and he’s blushing.

“It was pretty out of character for me…”

“Why?” she breathes.

“We all have fantasies, Em. Mine was to be whatever you wanted - the perfect encounter, even if it was just for one night.” He ducks his gaze and stubs the toe of his sneaker against the ambulance tire. “I never thought it would actually happen. Never. And then I figured you and Hotch out. I thought… maybe there was a ghost of a chance that you’d be with another co-worker.”

She stares and breathes, and stares and breathes. She doesn’t know what else to do.

“But you were right: I’m not really a casual sex kinda guy. I tried my best though, because it seemed to be what you wanted, and I got to fulfill my fantasy even if you had no idea what it meant to me.”

“Spencer…” 

He just shrugs. “I’m still impressed that I pulled it off. And then you said yes again, and again… I couldn’t believe it.”

“You didn’t pull anything off.”

He looks back at her then, startled.

“You can’t fake that. Well, maybe you can, but not for long. The man who matched me, desire for desire… he’s real. You can’t learn that kind of uninhibitedness from books or the internet. It lives inside you until someone gives you the freedom to let it out. Why can’t you admit that’s a part of who you are, Spencer?”

“A sex fantasist?”

“An adventurer. Maybe not a casual adventurer, but still…”

His eyes move to his shoes again. “It’s never been a part of me before.”

“I don’t believe that. I think you’ve bought into the image that everyone else has of you a little too much.”

“Maybe,” he mumbles. “Just like you’ve bought into the idea that no one would want you if you let your guard down and show them who you are or how much you care.”

Her stomach twists as his stare grabs her again and lets her know that he’s nobody’s fool.

“We need to stop kidding ourselves, Emily,” he pushes on as his grip on her tightens. “I care about you. A lot. But we’ve really screwed this up.”

“What are you saying?” This is the part where all of the good sex in the world won’t balance out the deficits in her character. He’s seen much more of her than she planned on. She’s grateful that he appears to be heading for the exit _without_ enumerating all of her flaws before he leaves.

“I’m saying that we need to stop sleeping together, and get serious about this instead.”

“Wait… I’m sorry… _What?_ ” She’s missed something. She’s definitely missed something.

“I want to be with you. _You._ And I don’t care if you think you’re a horribly unworthy human being without it, but I don’t want you to deflect me with sex anymore. It’s too easy to do, Em, and obviously, we both fall for it. Either you let me in - and I let you in - or we end it now. If we can sort out our personal mess, then we can go back to messing around with each other’s bodies. But only _if._ ”

“Are you _serious?_ ” It comes out sounding a lot more incredulous than she intends.

“Thirty minutes ago I was being held at gunpoint. Serious is my only gear at the moment.”

“But… what if we ruin it?”

“C’mon, Em,” he says gently as his stare softens. “Don’t you think it’s a little bit ruined already?”

And that’s when she realizes that if she says no she could lose a lot more than if she says yes.

 

She’s on leave until her OPR hearing, and there must be a ton of bad apples at the Bureau because she can’t even get a preliminary date set for almost six weeks. She has no idea what she’ll do with all of that free time. After the first two weeks she’s caught up with all of her friends, her chores, and her overloaded DVR, and boredom is beginning to lead to questionable mental tangents. She hasn’t seen much of the team since it happened; Garcia took her to lunch and Morgan called her to make sure she wasn’t beating herself up too much, but that’s it. She’s a little disappointed that Reid hasn’t shown his face yet, especially after everything they said in San Diego, but then again she thinks that he might be wary of being alone with her now that sex is off the table. She keeps thinking about his question - _Don’t you think it’s a little bit ruined already?_ \- and wonders if he’s changed his mind. She decides to begin with a passive, cowardly attempt, and texts him. He responds promptly and with an appropriate friendliness. She guesses that’s something so she keeps doing it. Soon they’re texting daily with updates and random weirdness, but she knows it’s not enough. They need to be able to be next to one another, to look each other in the eye, be honest, and keep all of their clothes on. She has to stop being a teenaged girl about it and just take it on instead, even if it fails spectacularly.

So that’s how she finds herself on a 24-hour mini golf course with a confused Reid at eleven-thirty on a Thursday evening.

“I thought you liked me,” he says, staring at his putter like it’s a venomous predator. “Why have you dragged me out to play _sports?_ ”

“C’mon, Reid. I think you’d be hard pressed to find many who would call mini golf ‘a sport’.”

“Hmmm,” he says dubiously, watching her take the first hole. “I suppose the ‘mini’ part is meant to make it appear less threatening…”

“Give it a try,” she huffs while leaning on her putter. “Think of it as an exercise in physics, with beer at the end.”

He raises his eyebrows at her and then shrugs and focuses all of his attention on putting the tiny ball into the clown’s mouth. “Okay then.”

She laughs, amazed that’s all it takes to convince him. He fumbles a little to start with, but the learning curve isn’t too steep, and by the time they’ve finished half the course he’s matching her shot for shot. She tries not to appreciate the long lines of him as he works his way past every obstacle in the suit that he insisted on wearing. She feels like a slob next to him in her worn jeans and leather jacket, but the few times she catches him watching her, it appears that he doesn’t feel the same way about it. Her face heats and she thinks _okay, this isn’t so bad…_

“See? I knew you’d get into it,” she says as he masters the windmill on the final hole.

“This is a game for gnomes,” he mutters as he retrieves his ball. “I feel like everyone else has a distinct advantage.”

She rolls her eyes at him but when he smiles back at her she has to make three attempts before she finishes the hole.

“Have you thought about what you’ll say to OPR?” he asks at the bar at the end of the course.

“Why? Are you worried?”

He gives her a strange look. “Yes, of course I am.”

Irritation flashes through her because she thought he knew her better than that. She thought he trusted her more. “I won’t use our… personal lives to justify my actions, if that’s what concerns you. You can relax.”

She slurps her beer and looks out over the lit, mostly abandoned golf course. Her hope slides out of her almost as easily as the beer slides in.

“Emily,” he murmurs, but his tone demands that she look at him. He’s put his beer down and is leaning forward with a serious glare. “I don’t care about that. I’m not worried for me… I’m worried for _you_.”

 _Oh. Well…_ Something flutters in her stomach.

“OPR can come after me any time they want. It takes a lot more than bureaucratic censure to rattle me,” he continues, his gaze softening. “I’m worried that you’re gonna go in there with your armor laced up to your eyeballs and act like it was nothing and it hasn’t effected you.”

“‘Armor laced up to my eyeballs’?”

“You know what I’m talking about, Em. You put up walls. You want everyone to think you’re perfect and impenetrable. Don’t do that with OPR, I’m telling you. Let them see that you’re human. You feel, you use your gut, and sometimes that gets messy. It doesn’t mean that you’re a lousy agent. In fact, it might make you seem like a better one in their eyes.”

She blinks away. “Do you really think that? That I put up walls?”

“You know you do. But you want to change that, don’t you? Isn’t that why we’re out here playing a game made for little people in the dead of night?”

She looks back at him and he smiles. If she’d been lining up a shot, she’d have missed it. Again.

“I appreciate the effort you’re making, but I already know all about your armor and the problems it causes. OPR doesn’t. You need to convince them that you understand _why_ Michaels happened, and that you’re going to do something about it.”

“What if I can’t do that?” She’s trying to keep her shaking to herself because she’s not really talking about OPR anymore. “What if I can’t change?”

His smile vanishes and he blinks, giving her a genuinely confused look instead. “Well then, what were those eighteen holes all about?”

“Lookin’ at your ass,” she says without missing a beat as she stifles her laughter and the tremendous wave of affection that rolls through her. He gives her a look that could peel paint. If he’d been a different sort of guy, he might have flipped her off.

“Huh. I guess I’ll be visiting you in Greenville Pen after all.”

She tosses a napkin at him and he pretends to pout while drinking his beer as his ears go red. It’s so cute that she wants to crawl across that sticky table and molest him right there. But she pulls it all back into her and just watches as his eyes flick from her to his beer bottle, and then back again. The amusement fades, silence settles in.

“Thanks for the advice, Reid,” she says softly after what feels like forever. “I’m trying.”

“I know you are,” he murmurs back. “And I know you can do it. Just give it all a chance, okay?”

She wishes she could kiss him and not violate their ‘no messing around’ rule, because hearing him casually drop that he has faith in her like that is worthy of thanks on the same level as the confidence boost he’s just given her. She drives him back to his place, and then takes herself home determined not to misplace that trust from him. And aside from all of that, it was still a pretty good date especially since, yeah, she was staring at his ass most of the time.

 

The texting continues and there are a few more ‘dates’; they do a couple of lunches, he takes her bowling in what she assumes is revenge for mini golf, and he also gets her tickets to an amazing _Prairie Home Companion_ revue that blows her mind and she wonders when exactly she let it slip that she liked Garrison Keillor so much. They keep it light, and he doesn’t bring up her OPR hearing again, no doubt because he’s already said his peace on the matter - the rest is up to her. It feels very much like they’re on a break from a case, except the break is six weeks long. It occurs to her that if this is what ‘dating’ Spencer Reid feels like then they’ve been dating on and off for years and didn’t know it. Sure, they weren’t sleeping together for years, but they aren’t sleeping together _now_ either. Everything else is the same. She’s not sure if that’s comforting or disappointing, but she finds that the lack of stress she’s experiencing about it to be a welcome relief. She was really worried about losing him when he suggested this, and then she was worried that being intimate had changed them too much, but both of these concerns seem foolish in light of how easy it’s been to just _be together._ She never expected sex to be the difficult part of the equation; it’s the exact opposite of every other relationship she’s had.

One of their cases goes to trial during her hiatus and the prosecution goes badly. Half of the evidence gets thrown out on a technicality that would make the most seasoned law enforcement professional question their career choice. Almost the only thing left is the profile work provided by the BAU, and the lion’s share of that was generated by Reid, which means he has to testify. He’s given testimony dozens of times over the years and has managed to hone the skill as carefully as any other tool in his arsenal, but Emily can see that it’s weighing on him as the date approaches. Every time she brings it up he sweeps her concern aside or changes the subject, so she decides to try another tactic knowing that he might view it as her attempting to ‘protect’ him again. On the day he’s scheduled to appear she races through the court building as tactfully as she can in heels and without alarming the security guards until she finds him. He’s sitting outside the closed courtroom waiting to be called, and he’s so deep in his own head that he doesn’t even look up until she speaks out loud.

“There you are,” she huffs. “I didn’t know which part the case was being tried in. This place is a labyrinth…”

“What are you doing here?” he asks, a little taken aback by her sudden appearance. 

Other than his frown and his focus, he seems completely calm. He’s wearing ‘THE suit’, as she calls it in her mind because she’s not sure if he knows that it’s the best one he owns, and everything from his hair to his hands to his shoes are toned down and controlled. To the average person he’d seem like a professional patiently waiting his turn to do his job, but to her he might as well be yelling and bouncing off the walls.

“I’m here for moral support,” she smiles as she takes a seat on the bench beside him.

“I don’t need moral support,” he says flatly, probably not realizing how rude he sounds, and that’s just another indication that he’s freaking out.

“Yeah, you do.” She leans in and gives him a ‘who are you kidding’ eyebrow arch. “Look at you - yer a mess.”

He looks down at his suit, reflexively smoothing the lines with his hands. “What are you talking about? The suit’s fine…”

“The suit _is_ fine, and you look more than fine in it. I wasn’t talking about your appearance.”

He glances back at her and his stare hardens. “I testify all the time, Emily. I know exactly what to do and how to do it. I don’t appreciate your apprehension, no matter how well intentioned it may be.”

“I know that you know what to do, Spence. I’ve seen you give evidence before… I’ve seen you take apart defense attorneys during cross-examination so effectively that I’m sure a few of them wet themselves in the process. It’s sorta hot, truth be told.”

He ducks his face while the tips of his ears turn pink.

“But this isn’t a typical trial and you know it.” She waits a beat and when he doesn’t look at her she settles a hand on his leg to grab his attention. “Did Hotch give you the speech?”

“The speech?” he murmurs.

“Yeah, the one where he suggests that the fate of western civilization hangs in the balance if you fail to knock it out of the park on the first swing. He’s given me that one on occasion. He’s _such_ a prosecutor sometimes…”

“You know, sports metaphors aren’t really my thing…”

“My point is that you don’t have to knock it out of the park. In fact, it’s probably better if you don’t try.”

“Pardon?” His eyes snap to hers in confusion.

“You’re sitting here running over every detail of the case, every point in the profile, and you know that you don’t have to do that, Spencer. You’re the one guy out of all of us who doesn’t have to worry about his memory being called into question.”

“Reviewing the evidence calms me.”

“Do you feel calm right now?” she challenges and he looks away from her resentfully. She sighs and squeezes her grip on his leg a little. “Listen, I know you, alright? I know that the prosecutor has not-so-subtly suggested that this case has come down to you, and that combined with Hotch’s heavy-handed ‘go-get-‘em-tiger’ pep talk probably has you second guessing every damned move you made on this case trying to find any weak spots. But all that’s gonna do is rev you up so much that you’ll go in there and act like an overwound cuckoo clock and probably alienate the jury.”

“Em…” he huffs.

“If this thing goes sideways it isn’t your fault.” She grabs him by the chin and directs him to look at her. “The Federal Prosecutor’s office screwed this - not you. If you can go in there and save it then I’ll be waiting out here with a cape and tights for you to change into, but you need to look at this like any other case, as if what you have to say is just a part of it, not the damned lynchpin.”

He tries to look away from her again but can’t because of her grip. He breathes out once, long and low. “If this guy goes free…”

“Then he goes free,” she shrugs. “If you fail, big deal. So what? You fail, you fail, you fail. If you say it enough times the phrase becomes meaningless, and it truly will be because he won’t be free for long. We’ll get him one way or another. So stop building up this unrealistic pressure about it, and just go in there and do your thing like you’ve always done it instead. Make the defendant’s lawyer wish that he’d packed a spare pair of shorts in his briefcase.”

She grins and wiggles her eyebrows until he rolls his eyes at her. But he smiles as well. His back slouches a little and he starts to look more like himself.

“I’ve never made anyone wet themselves.”

“You totally have. And not always in fear, Hot Shot.” She gives him a knowing once over. He looks completely scandalized.

“You pick the weirdest times to flirt, you know,” he mumbles, as if what they’re doing is illegal.

“Can’t help it. Must be that suit. Or the fact that you’re wearing grown-up shoes.” She grins. “Or maybe it’s the thought of you in a cape and tights. So many turn ons, so little time…”

“See?” He points at her. “Weird.”

“Yeah, but do you feel better?”

He leans in a little as if he might kiss her, but then stops, his gaze softening. “Yes, I feel better. Thanks. It seems silly that you had to come all the way down here to remind me to just be myself. Some genius I am…”

“Whatever. Like I had more important things to do while ‘on vacation’.” She lets her smile fall away as she gets serious for a moment. “You’ve helped me out a lot, Spencer. It seemed like it was time for me to return the favor.”

“I don’t keep track of that sort of thing.” He looks down and shrugs.

“Which is just another reason why I had to come today. You needed to see a friendly face, to know that we believe in you no matter what the outcome is. The whole damned team should be here right now supporting you, not just me.”

He reaches for her hand and curls it into his grip. He stares at their hands for a long moment in silence thinking something over. “I’m glad it’s just you here today.”

Her heart vaults into her throat and she has to swallow several times to convince it to settle back down into her chest. She plasters a smirk onto her face in lieu of something more frightening and honest.

“That’s ‘cause you needed to get your flirt on to bring out your badass self.” She winks at him. “It would’ve been so awkward to do it with Hotch instead…”

He laughs and it rings off the marble walls making it much louder than it should be. He looks around sheepishly as he covers his mouth; him being self-conscious in his tailored suit when he’s moments away from walking into federal court and wiping the floor with a thousand-dollar-per-hour attorney is so attractive that she has to fight to keep her hands to herself. She tries to laugh off the crest of affection that warms her and makes her face heat while they huddle together like conspirators. And then as if on cue, a bailiff appears through the courtroom doors and calls his name. He gives her a ‘here goes nothing’ shrug and rises, straightening the line of his jacket when her hand slips from his. His expression changes to something stoic and professional, and her libido decides to find _that_ sexy as hell too even though she knows it’s just a convenient disguise. Apparently, his competency has become a kink for her. She takes a deep breath and tells herself to get a grip.

“Good luck, Doctor. I’ll be out here waiting with your cape when you’re done.”

“Good.” He turns back, giving her an incredibly serious look. “Because this bogus flirtation session isn’t over by a long shot.”

The side of his mouth lifts momentarily in a smirk and then his professional glare is back in place as he and the bailiff disappear into the courtroom. Once she’s alone in the corridor again she feels like doing a little victory dance. Her only goal was to lift him up, even if it was just temporarily, and she’s not only amazed that she accomplished that but also that it made her feel so good in the process. She puts it down to this need to be there for him the way he always seems to be there for her. It’s not a need to protect him, she realizes, it’s wanting to be _a part_ of him, of the things he does. This idea rolls around in her head for a while and she recognizes that she’s in this thing between them far deeper than she thought. It’s no longer about fantasies or sex or maintaining what they’ve had for years. She’s finally shoehorned the time and effort into her life for a relationship but has no idea where things go from here. It’s a bit unnerving that she’s made it this far in life and doesn’t know how this basic, human function works.

When he exits the courtroom almost two hours later with his hands shoved into his pockets and an unreadable expression on his face, her sense of victory sours and she scrambles to find a way to bolster him.

“How did it go?” she murmurs.

He shrugs, giving her a ‘who knows’ sort of ambivalence that doesn’t help at all. But before she can respond, the prosecutor appears from the flood of people exiting the courtroom for a lunch break and squeezes Reid by the shoulder giving him a thrilled grin.

“Thanks for everything, Doctor Reid. That was fantastic,” he says before being pulled away by one of his support staff.

Reid looks back at Emily and breaks out into a sheepish smile. “Guess I nailed it.”

“You _guess?_ ” She shoves him a little but she’s grinning with delight she can’t hide. “Son of a bitch, you did that on purpose, didn’t you?”

His face gets a little rosy. “So, I suppose that further consoling efforts are off the table now, huh?”

“Yes they are, you smart, sneaky little bastard.” She loops her arm through his and directs him down the corridor with the rest of the courtroom exodus. “But you can have a victory lunch instead since you actually ended up saving the day after all.”

“I’ll take it,” he says warmly knocking into her side and covering her hand with his in the crook of his arm.

They end up at a barbeque joint, both wearing bibs like infants, with her being distracted by the way he licks sauce off his fingers while outlining the evolution of the superhero in modern popular culture. It’s the best meal she’s had in ages and she doesn’t care if she looks ‘cool’ while she enjoys it or if she’s staring at him too much. He just seems more amazing today than usual and she adds it to her list of surprising ‘dates’ with Reid even though he probably doesn’t consider it one. That makes her wonder if he differentiates between ‘dating’ and hanging out, because it feels the same to her, and that’s when she figures out that she has to stop putting boundaries around things. The only thing that matters is being with each other, whatever form that takes.

It’s a realization that she carries with her to her OPR hearing a week later. On top of Reid’s advice about being human in front of the panel, she understands that she wants to keep working with him. She wants to be a part of the things he does - the victories, the setbacks, all of it. She wants that with the whole team, of course, but understanding it through the specific lens of Reid’s partnership makes her see her job as commitment to relationships rather than the relentless, ambitious drive that her career has always been before. And win or lose, she knows it’s an insight she can’t turn off - she’ll take it with her wherever she lands next. Maybe that was all the panel needed to see: that she was committed to something greater than herself.

When she gets out of the hearing and turns her phone back on there are a few texts from Reid who’s on a case in Tulsa.

_* Good luck today. I’m sorry I can’t be there, but you are gonna do great. *_

_* Imagine me waiting in the hall with a cape & boots *_

_* And now I’m spending my time picturing you in superhero boots *_

She laughs out loud, not worried if anyone thinks she’s nuts in the process. She was privately upset that he couldn’t be there, but the happiness produced by those three lines of text on her phone sweeps that resentment aside.

_\-- OPR cleared me of any wrongdoing. I’m back to active status as of Monday. --_

His response comes almost immediately as if he’s been waiting to hear from her.

_* Congratulations. I never had any doubts. *_

_\-- Really? ‘Cause I did. --_

_* Some day you’ll realize that you’re not as awful as you think you are. You’re self-aware, you’re open to change, and no one died. Of course you were gonna get cleared. *_

_* Do you think kick-ass FBI agents grow on trees? *_

_\-- Well, I know that best friends don’t. Thanks for believing in me. --_

_* Always, Em. It’s what I do. *_

_* Besides, who else is gonna come rescue me the next time I get held hostage? And you know there will be a ‘next time’… *_

_\-- Christ, yer too much, Spencer --_

She rolls her eyes as her chest squeezes so tightly that she has to cough in order to keep breathing. She wants to carve herself open, butterfly her ribs, and offer him her flustered, straining heart. He _believes_ in her and she thinks that’s more than a little bit crazy of him. She’s a complete mess, narrowly avoiding both professional censure and personal humiliation, and he’s still in her corner. She smiles when she pockets her phone and tries not to bounce down the corridor as she walks. For someone who’s never been fond of entanglements, she’s shocked to discover that the feeling of _needing_ Reid is absolutely fantastic. It’s something she wants get used to.

 

Garcia insists that Emily’s reinstatement gets celebrated and she finds herself in a grubby-yet-charming pool hall with her, Morgan, and Reid. Inevitably Morgan decides that he has to show off his pool skills and challenges Emily to a game. She hasn’t played in years, and was never very good, but then Garcia wants in and suddenly they’ve decided to play teams. Garcia picks Morgan but then squints across the table after she’s made her decision.

“Wait a second… having Reid as your partner is an unfair advantage.”

Reid raises his eyebrows in a ‘who, me?’ sort of way.

“Yeah. This is all geometry, right?” Garcia wiggles a hand airily over the felt. “Well, he’s a math genius…”

Reid snorts and rolls his eyes. “A math genius who’s yet to find a sport he has any affinity for…”

Morgan grins. “I think we’ve got this, Baby Girl, don’t worry.”

“Hey, how about you wait until after you break before slagging my teammate.” Emily says it lightly but she can feel herself get defensive despite the friendly ribbing. She looks to Reid, who’s racking up the balls, but he’s chuckling and relaxed like there’s nothing offensive about his friends’ doubts. She shoves her protective instinct aside: if he’s not worried about it, she shouldn’t be. And then he takes it a step further.

“You know, if you’re so confident about this, Morgan, you should put your money where your mouth is.”

Reid looks innocent but Emily’s starting to suspect him. Garcia grins with a ‘oh no he didn’t’ look on her face, and Morgan just looks smug as he nods.

“Okay, Pretty Boy. Whatcha thinking?”

Reid pauses. “Loser picks up the tab?”

“You got it. Prepare to be schooled, Mathlete.”

Then it’s on. Morgan breaks and sinks a few right away, then hands the cue over to Garcia who scratches on her first shot. Next Emily steps up and sinks an easy ball before handing her cue to Reid. Another easy shot is set up but he walks around the table and takes a different one that was harder to make. In the process he frees up a few more of their balls that will make better shots down the line. He nods and looks pleased, then hands the cue back to Emily with a smile. She sinks the easy shot that he didn’t take and then hands the stick back to him.

“Oh man, I think we’re being played here…” Garcia mutters and Emily can’t help but grin a little.

But it doesn’t really go like that. They make a few more shots but then Emily misses one and Morgan takes over. He starts sinking shots all over the place, grinning like a pro and lapping up Garcia’s inappropriate commentary. Emily feels ludicrously like she’s let Reid down but when she looks over at him she’s surprised that he’s so amused by all of it. He catches her looking and gives her a quick wink like it’s nothing. She leans hard against the table edge then because he’s _never_ done anything that cool before and the fact that it’s a secret between them kinda undoes her a little. He promised that he’d let her in and he hasn’t disappointed on that front. She thought she knew him pretty well already but finding out that he’s _this_ funny, spontaneous, open-minded, generous… well, it makes her feel like she hasn’t really seen him clearly until now. She can’t believe that she might have missed out on all of it if he hadn’t insisted that they try this.

Garcia hits the wrong ball and then pouts while Morgan soothes her and lets everyone know that he’s not worried about how this game will end. His cocky grin makes Emily wish he’d seen Reid’s wink. Reid sinks a medium-hard shot but the scatter afterwards makes the other set-ups a little more challenging. Emily takes the cue and picks her mark, but as she stares down the felt to the pocket, she starts to doubt. She lines up the cue, taking her time.

“Emily,” Reid says quietly from somewhere behind her. “Three degrees more to your right.”

“Pardon?”

“Here…”

His hand lands on her hip and holds her steady while his other hand adjusts the angle at the base of the stick. She feels his thigh brush against hers as he leans over the felt to mimic her position, but other than the hand on her hip, he doesn’t touch her.

“There,” he murmurs beside her and then guides her through a practice stroke without hitting the ball. “Just a light tap. Look to where you want the ball to go as you follow through on the stroke. It will help keep your aim straight.”

She turns and looks up at him. He’s staring down the table at her shot and then he looks at her and gives her a smile that warms her from head to toe.

“Hey, no cheating!” Garcia knocks the edge of the table and then wiggles a finger at them.

“There’s no cheating going on.” He backs away. “I’m not playing her turn or anything. It’s just a little friendly advice.”

Emily doesn’t feel friendly. In fact, Reid’s just ruined her concentration with his Fast Eddie Felson impersonation, but she takes a breath and makes the shot, hoping that she’s doing it the way he suggested, and she sinks it. He gives her a thumbs up when she hands the stick over to him and the gesture makes her preposterously happy.

They take a few more shots but then Emily scratches a turn and Morgan sinks one that leaves nothing easy for Garcia to take out. She misses and then it’s down to the last ball that will win Emily and Reid the game. Except it’s an impossible shot: the cue ball is trapped by two solids against the table edge, and Emily’s one lone striped ball is halfway down the table parked behind the eight ball. She’d have to defy the laws of physics in order to win the game.

“I can’t make that,” she sighs, pointing her stick at her trapped target. She turns towards Reid with a look of apology. “I guess we’re buying tonight.”

“Not necessarily.” He’s staring at the table with the same intensity he gives to some of his geographic profiles.

“Reid, c’mon…”

He thinks a moment longer and then snaps his fingers rushing toward her with an excited look. “Got it! We’re gonna do a ‘hop-along’…”

“A what?”

“Here, lemme show you.”

He pushes her right up against the edge of the table where the cue ball is and then drags over a chair and plants it behind her. Then he balances one knee onto the chair and the other on the ridge of the pool table. He’s flush against her back but almost a head higher than her looking down. She loses the power to speak because it’s fairly intimate and yet he’s acting like it’s nothing. He gestures for the cue and she hands it to him. He lines it up vertically almost directly above the caged ball, then he grabs her hands and molds them to the stick as he basically traps her between his body and the table.

“You’re going to shoot straight down, hard. If you aim off center… like this,” He demonstrates, sliding the stick through their laced grip. “The clockwise spin will knock the ball back into the stick shaft. It’ll basically bounce.”

He’s grinning down at her like a kid, like he’s got magic in his pocket and he can’t wait to let it out.

“Then we let the far side of the table and inertia do the rest.”

“I… I don’t get it,” she says a little too breathily.

“Trust me.” He leans down and his smile gets impossibly wider as he does it. “You can do this, Emily. Just give it everything you’ve got, okay? No holding back.”

He’s happy, flushed with excitement, and undeniably beautiful in that instant. It’s just a game but he trusts her completely with their plan. To him, they are in it together just like everything else they do. She wants to make this shot so badly that it seems like there ought to be more than just a silly bar tab on the line. It’s a snapshot of the place her heart’s been heading for some time now, and the comprehension hits her so hard that it seems too dramatic for a Thursday evening in a dirty pool hall. She’s looking at _the guy_ \- the only one she wants - and he’s absolutely, 100% real. No others need apply.

She nods and swallows hard - her mouth has gone very dry all of a sudden. He slides his hands out from under hers and backs away a little, giving her an encouraging jut of his chin as he reiterates, “Everything you’ve got.” And then she looks down at the innocuous white ball silently threatening it if it doesn’t cooperate. She jams the cue stick down as hard and fast as she can.

The cue ball snaps back against the stick so quickly that she drops it and hears it clatter to the bar floor. But it played its part. The cue ball _actually_ hops over the balls that block it, and then it zings across the table and bounces off the far edge at a sharp angle, zooms down the felt, bounces off the end edge and slides along it like it’s on a rail. It rolls along the crease, losing speed until it reaches the eight ball blocking the cue ball from its target and the pocket behind it. The cue hits the eight, the eight taps the striped ball, and they both roll towards the pocket. The stripe sinks but the eight rolls to a stop just at the pocket’s edge. Everyone around the table stares in silence for a moment, and then everything erupts.

“Oh, come on!” Morgan yells.

“That’s… that’s…” Garcia stutters.

“Science!” Reid whoops with his hands in the air and then jumps down from the chair and picks Emily up in a bear hug.

“That… that shouldn’t have happened,” she huffs as he puts her down, her grin now matching his.

“Are you kidding?” he laughs. “That was all physics and geometry. And you are awesome, so how was that _not_ gonna happen?”

God, she wants to kiss him so much at that moment that she has to bite her tongue to give herself something else to think about.

“I knew it! I knew it!” Garcia is pointing across the table at them. “Brilliant McGeniuspants over there scienced us! You totally cheated, Reid.”

“It’s remedial stuff, Penelope. No advanced degree required. If you weren’t paying attention in high school, that’s not my fault.”

“I was paying attention,” Garcia snarks. “To a futuristic thing called CODING. You may have heard of it…”

“That’s science too. Got any more excuses?” Reid grins.

“Pretty cocky, brother,” Morgan growls, but he also looks impressed.

“Call it what you like,” Emily chips in. “You’re still paying for beer, Derek.”

The losers continue griping for a while and then Emily decides that she has to make an escape before anyone catches her staring at Reid like a star-struck groupie. She wonders if nerds get groupies… maybe on Twitter… Anyway, after a lot of cajoling from both Morgan and Garcia about how early it is and how old she must be getting if she’d really bailing already, she breaks free. Reid’s hand finds its way to her hip and she’s looking at him, all flushed and breathless.

“I’ll walk you out,” he smiles like he does it for everyone.

They make it to the street and it’s a soft spring night with no taxis in sight so they slowly walk towards the nearest intersection. Half a block into their stroll, Reid’s fingers lace into hers at her side but when she looks up at him he’s gazing down the street. Her heart thumps out a fat, hard beat as she makes up her mind.

“You’ve done that before,” she murmurs, belying the nerves that are making her want to jump out of her skin right now.

He grins in a ‘you got me’ sort of way. “Garcia wasn’t wrong: it’s basically all math. Back in college I tried to construct a predictive algorithm for possible set-ups in the game. I wanted to see if it could be a controllable system like poker or chess. Wrote a paper on it.”

“You’re kidding,” her eyebrows rise. “But the possible combinations must be endless…”

“Not quite but close.” He leans into her side and chuckles. “Long story short: I produced the equation but the real-world applications were minimal. I impressed my professor though, and got job offers from both the NSA and the mathematics department as a result.”

She whistles because the NSA doesn’t pony up unsolicited job offers to academics unless you’re scary smart. He wiggles his eyebrows.

“My research necessitated many hours of real time game observation. I may have picked up a cue from time to time along the way. Purely to test my evolving theory, of course. Sometimes… money entered the situation…”

“You were a shark!” she breathes with joy, eyes wide. Fast Eddie Felson indeed, with a side of big, sexy brains.

He waves his free hand in the air, grinning like a fiend. “I’m not admitting anything like that to a federal agent.”

They are almost at the corner and she can see cabs whizzing by along the thoroughfare. It won’t take them long to flag one down and for her to find herself closed in and heading back to her place without him. A sudden, urgent deadline rises up in her: she needs to get what’s in her _out_ before they get to the corner. If she doesn’t, she thinks it might never happen.

“Anyway it comes in handy, having a secret skill like that,” he continues, unaware of her sudden serious mood. “Both from a financial standpoint as well as a ‘coolness’ one-”

She stops dead and when she tugs his hand he turns back, half-smiling until he sees her face, and then his brow creases and his lightheartedness evaporates into worry instantaneously.

“What is it?”

She takes a deep breath and jumps. “I’m in love with you, you know.”

He blinks, confused, and then a look washes over him like he suddenly ‘gets it’. He gives her a casual smile. “It’s the pool shark thing. I know Morgan’s gonna be half in love with me too after this evening…”

“No,” she interrupts more loudly than she needs to and holds his gaze as if she’s about to tell him the secret to the universe. “It’s not the pool thing.”

His smile fades for a second time and he goes still. Her pulse is roaring in her ears and there’s a tightness in her chest that’s getting so painful she thinks that she might have to curl into a ball to ease it. But she can’t move - she’s frozen, waiting on him. _What if it’s not enough? What if he’s come to like me as I am, but it’s not love?_

“This is the part where you talk…” she mumbles, voice unsteady.

“Say it again,” he demands almost instantly. 

She winds up to repeat herself but she only gets out a syllable or two before he tugs her against him kissing her like he hasn’t done since San Diego and the Michaels case. He goes at her impatiently, like he’s been waiting for her to say the words that would set him free, and that thought turns her to molten liquid in his grip. She moans a little - it sounds too wet and anxious for her liking - but it just makes him pull her closer, go deeper, curl around her as if he’s trying to tell her that she doesn’t have to worry about whatever happens next. She feels his fingers in her hair, skimming around her waist, and her own bite into his jacket twisting until she has bunches of fabric in her grasp. She doesn’t want him going anywhere, having any doubts, or finding any avenue for escape - not after kissing her like he’d die if he couldn’t. They break apart, both gasping hard for air, and he leans into her forehead as if he’s saying _that’s far enough, no further._

“I totally interrupted you. Sorry. You were saying?”

She laughs softly, feeling lightheaded. “Felt an urge, did you?”

“I feel the urge to hear you tell me that again.”

She pulls him in by his jacket until her lips brush his ear. “I’m in love with you.”

“Emily,” he draws her name out as his arms tighten and lift her off her feet against him. He turns with her once, slowly, and then places her down again watching her as if she’ll disappear.

“I mean it,” she whispers. “It’s real. _You’re_ real, and I want you so badly that it’s making me a little crazy. That’s gotta be love, right?”

“Or psychosis.” He dips in and kisses her before she can respond. “But I’m voting for love.”

“Nothing tells a woman she’s wanted like sarcasm.” She rolls her eyes at him.

“Sorry. I don’t mean to be glib.” His expression gets serious. “I just didn’t think that a loud, spontaneous declaration of thanks to a deity I distrust in the middle of the street would be something you’d be open to. But that’s exactly how I feel, Em. Every fiber of me is screaming _Thank God, Thank God, Thank God…_ ”

“Spence…” She arches up and catches his lips again. He opens up to her and it’s her turn to be hungry. The intensity that’s simmered between them since their first night together splashes up from where she’s stowed it away. It sears her, making her burn as she takes him. Her nails dig into the back of his neck, her mouth moves, nipping and pulling as she goes, the soft burr of his five o’clock shadow lighting her up like a match.

“It feels like… I didn’t really know you. Like I haven’t really seen you even though we’ve been friends for years,” she whispers when they separate. His stare gets worried again. “These last six months - it’s like you’ve come into focus somehow. I didn’t think sex could do that, and maybe that’s too simplistic an explanation for what’s happened here. But whatever it was, I’m sorry that it took me so long to recognize it, Spence. I really am.”

He blinks and then breathes out a long, slow breath. She feels his fingers trace the line of her cheekbone hypnotically.

“We’re all hiding, you know,” he says eventually. “All of us, all the time. We’re afraid of not fitting in or being rejected or getting hurt… and in our job we see how those fears get twisted in horrible ways, and it makes you feel justified in the isolation you find yourself in. Like you’ll be safer, better off somehow.”

His gaze flicks away and she sees a blush rise to his cheeks. She gets this sense that he’s admitting to something he’s felt ashamed of for years.

“I’ve always wanted to reach out to you, Emily. You made me feel like… I’d still be safe even if I risked it. That’s why I value our friendship so much. Risking has never been my strong suit but I was always willing to try it with you. Maybe that’s why I persisted that night at the bar because even if nothing ever happened, I guess I figured we’d still be okay. A belief like that can make you braver than you should be.”

He shrugs and then she realizes that he’s shaking under her hands. “That time we were together - when we were sober - and you asked me what we were doing… that was the first time I took a risk and felt unsafe about it. I realized I wanted _more_ but that you didn’t feel the same way. I felt stupid for mistaking my need for something else…”

Her stomach rolls dangerously and her fingers clasp at his neck as if he’s about to bow out of this for something that happened months ago. But he keeps talking, ignoring her anxiety completely.

“But after the Gettner confession… in cold case storage…” He swallows hard looking at her intently. “It felt like maybe… maybe you needed me too. Maybe we were both tired of hiding but we didn’t know how to go about this any other way.”

“Spencer, I-I…”

“It’s okay if you didn’t see me clearly until we screwed this whole thing up, Emily,” he whispers like he’s on a clock with this. “‘Cause I don’t think I saw you clearly either. But I do now. I see that I love my best friend, and I see that I’m scared because this risk isn’t an easy one to take.”

His hands clasp both sides of her face, bringing them closer, making it more urgent. “I need you, Em. You’ve seen all of these different sides of me, even the ones that I try to hide away, and you seem to find that acceptable. You say that you’re in love with that. No one else has - ever. That just does something…” He stops and takes a huge breath and holds it, eyes squeezing shut like he’s waiting for something monumental to ease past him. “I _need_ that. I only want that with you.”

He opens his eyes, dips in so that his lips are just brushing hers when he whispers again. “So if _that’s_ what you mean when you say you’re in love - if you need me like that too… tell me again, and don’t worry about how you got there.”

She sighs against his lips and then presses into them for a soft kiss. “I love you. Just like that. It scares the hell out of me. Maybe a little less now that you’ve explained it the way you just did.”

He collects her up tightly, waits for her to open up to him, and goes in deep. He licks into her, again and again, slowly, as if they have all night and they aren’t out where anyone can see them. She feels his fingers in her hair, clutching her close, cradling her into him like his favorite thing and it makes her lose it a little. His lips are constantly moving, slipping over hers in a way that feels half like kisses and half like mumbled speech, and she wonders if he’s actually doing both. Her hands dig into him as she decides to do that back, murmuring her thanks as they slip and curl together. He pulls away from her, a smile breaking across him as his eyebrows simultaneously wrinkle in confusion, and she suddenly wants him somewhere all to herself for days so that they can figure what happens next and say all of the things they’ve been too terrified to let out over the past six months.

“So, I guess we have to figure out how to combine all of this together, huh?” He’s smiling but she knows he’s worried because she’s worried about the exact same thing. There’s the intimacy, and the friendship, and work, and all three have lived in separate boxes until this moment. She’s praying that they’re both smart enough to sort this out.

“Tell me this means we can start having sex again,” she breathes down his jaw, deciding to leap first and worry later. “Because I’m not gonna lie, I’ve _really_ missed that…”

“I’ve really missed it too,” he says darkly, making her whine involuntarily. And like that, they’ve moved from one box to another. She wonders if it could really be that simple - had they made it unnecessarily complicated all this time?

“So… now?”

“In the street? We’ll get arrested.” He looks like he means it, like she’s confused him somehow. Or maybe he’s learned to not put any idea out of reach for them. That’s all it takes to break her restraint; she starts dragging him toward the main road.

“Not in the street, but I like where you’re head’s at. I meant your place. Or mine, I don’t care which. Just… _now._ Tonight.”

“Oh,” he grins as they reach the main intersection and Emily flags down a cab, unceremoniously stuffing him into it before he can ask any more questions.

He holds her close as the taxi whisks them to his apartment, his fingers stroking so soothingly through her hair that she isn’t really put out that he won’t kiss her where the cabbie can spy on them. She finds herself curling into him as her heart rate slows and she takes a long, slow beat to absorb everything that’s happened so far. But when they get inside his place, it’s completely different again: half blazing intensity of their first hook-up, and half soft lulls of partially-clothed kissing and dangerous murmurs. He keeps stopping, pulling back to look at her in flushed awe, and it makes her blush until her ears burn. She’s not used to a man looking at her like she’s the answer to some secret, lifelong prayer. She has no idea how to handle it. At one point, he nips at her mouth as he tries to pull her to the bedroom without tripping up over anything, and says, “It’s okay to not know”.

“It’s okay to not know what?” She pulls away just as they make it into the room. He cups her jaw gently.

“It’s okay to not know how this is going to work out.”

Christ, he really must be a genius, or he’s just that good at reading facial cues…

“I’m trying not to freak out. I don’t want to ruin this.”

“Em, freak out all you want,” he kisses into her hair. “I’m scared too, remember? But being frightened has kept us isolated for far too long. I need you more than I need to feel safe about it.”

“That’s what I’ve wanted for months,” she blurts out and he stops stripping her and stares instead. She shrugs and figures that she ought to finish admitting to it. “That time in cold case storage. I knew you were hurting from the case and… I wanted you to bring that to me. Just me. I wanted to be the one who puts you back together after things like that. I’ve never felt that way about anyone before.”

“Em…”

“It’s not a protection thing,” she hurries. “Well, not _entirely._ I know that you can take care of yourself. It’s about being a part of things. That day I just… I wanted it to be more than just sex for you. I didn’t want to be your fantasy anymore.”

He’s silent for a long moment, one hand wrapped around her waist and the other frozen in the air where he was reaching to pull her blouse off her shoulder. Then he blinks and comes back to himself, straightening his back and letting that dangling hand drift down to her side just above her hip.

“I had a fantasy about you, but you were never how I imagined you to be. Not even that first time,” he murmurs. “You’ve always been _you_ to me from the first moment I touched you.”

“Really?” The word barely makes a sound and she clears her throat to marshal some control over the crazy electricity this realization has unleashed over her. Maybe she looks incredulous because he steps into her and grips her hard enough to bruise.

“God, Em, you really have no clue how the world sees you, do you? You’re this glorious, complicated, unstoppable force… you take my breath away all the time.”

He kisses her hard, like he can’t stand to hear any more of her doubts, and she goes pliant in his arms for the first time ever. It’s part astonishment but also part trust; she doesn’t need to battle him to stay in control. If she decides to let go, to submit, it’ll be okay because _it’s him._ Feeling the weight of that responsibility lift from her almost makes her dizzy. And then she’s gripping him tightly, pushing into him as deeply as he’s pushing into her. She bites down on his lip and he jumps a little but doesn’t pull away. Her lips slip from his with a last, hard suck as her nails score up under the back of his half-opened shirt.

“Get your damned clothes off now,” she growls and almost loses it when she sees his shock melt into a wide grin.

They strip and throw each other into bed. She pins him down and tries to consume him. Her mouth moves all over him, leaving luxurious wet trails down his body. She smoothes her hands over his long planes and sharp edges while he moans and flexes as if she’s torturing him. And then he turns the tables and uses his fingers and his tongue and the teasing drag of his cock over her to bring her to the edge just by touch alone. He laughs softly as he backs away, stalling her climax at its brink, and when she asks him why he just chuckles darkly and says he has a plan. He plays with her, teases her to her limits several times before he stops to begin all over again. Her frustration mounts and she ends up giving back as good as she’s getting, laughing almost gleefully at the strangled whine he makes when she fingers him but stops short of letting him come. When they eventually get together, it feels like they’ve been teasing for days. He’s finally moving in her in the way she’s missed for months, and everything falls away except the deep, poignant gasps they ring from each other. They’re sweat-slicked and heaving through the strain mindlessly, lost in this stalled sensuality that seems dangerously endless. She’s worn out, desperate to come and finally release everything she feels. She looks up into his blown out expression, damp hair swinging as he pulses in her, gasping in a recklessness that matches her own.

“Baby, please…” she begs, barely heard over the sound of them moving. She’s done playing. She needs a release for _all_ it. It’ll be this messy explosion of everything she can’t articulate, but she needs him to see it. She tries to find the words, to let him know that he’s won, but all she can do is whisper the same word over and over. “Please…”

There must be something about her as she begs. His eyes get impossibly huge and his rhythm slows as he lowers himself to gently take her mouth. Fingers curl in her tangled hair, he moans something against her tongue - it feels like a phrase but she can’t make it out - and then his hips thrust into her hard and sharp, again and again and again. He has to keep up the brutal pace for a half minute until she breaks. He pulls his mouth away and breathes hard against her cheek as she tightens around him and cries out in painful relief. She arches her back, bowing herself away from the mattress and into his chest. He presses hard against her, making it difficult for her to breathe, before his own spine curls and he throbs into her as deep as he can manage while they move as one. He chokes into the side of her face as he works through it, slowly trying to stick the landing after being airborne for so long. She pulls him in, wraps him up until she swears that they can’t get any closer. He sags against her when it’s over and she doesn’t even register it for a long time, she’s just gasping and drained under him. Eventually she feels his lips moving against her cheek; he’s breathing ‘Love you’ into her skin like a mantra. And that’s when the tears slip from her. He pulls back when her chest hitches and then he’s brushing away the wetness on her cheeks with a terrified expression.

“Em, what did-”

“It’s okay,” she cuts him off with a kiss. “You’ve made me feel so much that, apparently, it comes out like this. I guess where we’re going is someplace messy and confusing.”

She rubs away the tears and grins at him, and he smiles back even though he doesn’t look entirely sure about it. “Don’t worry, Spence, and I’m really goddamned happy about it.”

Yep, the only thing she’d gotten right about Spencer Reid was that he’d make her feel wrung out and emotional.

 

She wakes alone the next morning and the age-old sense of dread sinks into her chest like she’s risen from a fever dream or something. She dresses quickly and tries to make herself presentable, and then wanders out into his living room. She finds him in the kitchen again, reading, the morning light outlining him in a way that’s completely familiar and yet suddenly looks new to her. He peers up when he hears her and smiles as if they’re about to walk into a case briefing instead of two people who declared themselves to each other eight hours earlier. She feels a shiver zip down her spine and wonders if it really was a dream after all.

“Coffee?” he asks and starts to get up. 

“S’okay. I’ll get it.”

She moves to the pot with her back to him and busies her hands with the coffee as she stares at the wood grain of his kitchen cabinets. She’s trying to calm down, to breathe through it… she should just say something. It’s stupid to live in doubt. Then there’s warmth up her back pushing her gently against the countertop, and a hand on her hip that anchors her internal spinning. She lets out a slow sigh of relief.

“You’re freaking out. I can see it, you know…” he whispers next to her ear.

Her hand reaches back and cups his jaw as she nods and blushes. “You’re right - I was, but you just fixed that.” She turns to face him, her second hand joining the first to hold the other side of his face. “Hey there.”

“Hey.” He bends in and kisses her, slow and soft. “Good morning, beautiful.”

She smiles against his lips. “I haven’t even brushed my hair, liar.”

“You are categorically stunning, Em. Always have been. But the effect has been amplified now that I know you’re mine.” He pulls back to look at her and must not like what he sees because his brow wrinkles up and the edges of his mouth pull down. “Is this all too much too soon? Should I not say that sort of thing? I mean… you cried last night and it had me really worried, but you said it was okay-”

“Baby,” she shushes him with her mouth against his. “You say whatever you want. Don’t walk around on eggshells or this will never work. I’m just not used to hearing these things, or feeling that it’s true and not a line some guy is feeding me. But I’ll work on that, I promise. If you think I’m amazing even though I look like I’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards, I’ll take that. Play to my vanity - I’m cool with it.”

She lifts one shoulder in a shrug giving him a lopsided grin and it makes him laugh softly. She wraps her arms around his neck and pulls him down, kissing him until he moans against her.

“Got plans for today?” she asks when they finally come up for air. He watches her cautiously before he answers.

“No. No plans.”

“Well,” she takes a deep breath, working on the stupid nerves that seem determined to think the worst in every situation. “There’s this outdoor book fair happening today in Anacostia. A lot of genre booksellers will have booths and, well, I thought it might be a good place to look for those missing volumes from that series you’re collecting…”

“ _Enchanted Worlds_?” his eyebrows rise.

“Yeah, that one. Even if we don’t find them, I know you’ll see something else to drool over. And there’s this new Korean sandwich place not far from the fair. They marinate and pickle absolutely everything and then put it on a bun - it should be amazing.”

“Sounds like you’ve really thought about this.”

“Umm, well, I mean, we don’t have to do that. Or anything else for that matter. If you want some time to yourself, that’s fine too… I just thought you’d enjoy the fair…”

“It sounds great, Emily,” he directs her gaze up to him with a finger under her chin. “But even if you didn’t have a plan, I’d still want to spend the day with you.”

“Okay,” she says a little breathlessly.

“Okay.” He hands her the cup of coffee she mixed and then forgot about, and directs her to sit next to his place at the countertop with a warm palm on her back. “Pickled sandwiches, huh? Your love of vinegar is getting a little outrageous.”

She slaps him lightly on the shoulder while giving him a dirty look. “What do you know? Have you ever tried it?”

“I know nothing about Korean food,” he chuckles into his mug.

“See? So it’ll be a learning opportunity as well. You should be all up in this, Brainiac.”

“Alright, alright… sour lunch it is. For educational purposes.”

He kisses her temple and she feels warm all over as something inside of her finally says _yeah, this could work._ They spend the day together, and then the evening, and then the following day and she’s surprised at how comfortable it is. Once she gets over second-guessing every damned feeling she has, things start to even out between them. They keep a safe distance from each other at work, but off the clock they spend nearly all of their time with one another. He tells her to come over whenever she likes, and she ends up leaving more and more of her stuff at his place. She doesn’t ask and he doesn’t comment on it except to smile when she roots around in his closet to make room for a few of her belongings.

They fight over stuff too; it’s not all sex and sunshine. She discovers that he’s not open to rearranging _everything_ for her, and that he has a weird OCD thing for his books and his kitchen set-up, among other things. She takes it too personally and says some stuff she shouldn’t before storming back to her condo (which doesn’t feel like home anymore because everything she likes is at his place). She can’t believe that she’s gone through all of this only to be rejected for her views on housewares. When the anger subsides she realizes that she’s used this small thing to be the litmus test for their whole relationship and that she really doesn’t give a shit about where he keeps his forks. She was just doing what she’s always done and tried to find a reason to pull away before he did. She has a small panic attack when she realizes what a dumb, neurotic fuck she’s been and then she gets in her car and breaks a lot of speed laws getting to his place. When he’s not there, she drives home again, gripping the wheel too hard and wondering aloud if she’s just trashed the best thing she’ll ever have. He’s standing outside her building when she arrives, just about to get into his own car to drive home, and she leaps out with the engine still running and grabs him up, apologies and tears running out of her in equal measure. He holds her for ten minutes straight, shaking, eventually telling her that he doesn’t care what she does with his utensils just so long as she comes _home_. Hearing him use that word strips her bare and she clings to him in the parking lot, rolled up onto her toes and buried in his shoulder telling him she loves him until her voice gives out. He chokes out that he needs her, saying it like he’ll never be allowed to again, and when they finally get back to his place they’re both so raw that they make love like it’s their first time, stopping occasionally for weepy declarations. The next morning when they meet up at the coffee pot they just wordlessly fall into a hug, knowing that they’ve turned a corner and both a little stunned by it.

A month later the lease on her condo comes up, and he asks her to move in since she’s practically living there already and they’ve settled the fork thing. They repaint and buy a new bed. They combine their belongings into this bohemian mishmash of style and eccentricity. Every time she sees it, she feels warm and solid. It’s as if their things just melt together and she has a hard time separating them out into ‘his’ and ‘hers’ again. She learns to respect his need for silence on Sunday mornings and his hysterical sock ritual. He lets go of his irritation about her bathroom regimen and that she likes to walk around the apartment barefoot. They make love with gusto and creativity, and they gravitate to each other when no one’s looking like it’s a law of nature or something. She’s happier than she’s ever been and sometimes she watches him typing at his desk or lost in a book stretched out along the sofa, and she can’t believe that it’s _Reid_ she needed all along. Sometimes he catches her watching and asks her what she sees. She shrugs it off, still unwilling to admit her teenaged awe at landing the cool boy she liked; she’s still Dr. Reid’s number one fangirl, apparently.

They continue to work well together and no one seems to notice any change between them. It’s tough at first, but not as tough as she imagines, and even though there’s no regulation barring agents of equal rank from having a relationship, they keep it quiet for reasons that are never quite discussed. It just feels as though what they have is for them alone, not the world at large, and she’s fine with that. But working with professional observers means that the secrecy can’t last. During an armed takedown on a case, Prentiss confronts a suspect while Reid slides into a secondary position that cuts off the UnSub’s escape route. When the guy figures it out, he gives up and lets Prentiss cuff him. Afterwards, Reid walks up, holstering his weapon and acting casual, asking her how she is. She smiles, thanks him for the assist, and then curls her finger around his at her side to give him extra assurance. He smiles back warmly, but when they part, she finds Hotch’s gaze bearing down on her. All she can think is that she knew it couldn’t last forever, but _shit._ Hotch doesn’t jump on it right away and when she discusses it with Reid he just runs his hands through his hair and shrugs.

“Maybe he won’t bring it up.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“It’s not an issue. You and I both know that.”

“But _he_ doesn’t. It’s his job to bring it up. And we have a history, so…”

“Yes, I know,” Reid says, his jaw getting tight. It’s the end of the conversation; Reid isn’t comfortable with what happened between her and Hotch, even though it was only once and forever ago. His insecurity is preposterous, but also weirdly persistent.

When Hotch stops by her desk and asks for a moment of her time a week later, she almost sags with relief. Reid gives her a worried look as she goes but she flicks his shoulder on the way past him to tell him to lighten up: she’s got this. She closes the office door behind her and waits to see how Hotch will come at her. He ends up not mincing words.

“Something’s happening between you and Reid.”

She doesn’t confirm or deny, she just watches him settle behind his desk and shuffle a few things around. He looks up at her suddenly, a professional scowl drawing down his features.

“You haven’t breached any regulation, but nevertheless this sort of thing is discouraged.”

He watches her for a reaction and then takes deep breath when he finds none forthcoming. “You know that I don’t want to bring this up, and you know exactly why. But I also thought you were more careful about workplace affairs. There are very real dangers in what you are doing.”

She gets angry - surface-of-the-sun, incendiary anger - and it’s her undoing. She’s just worked too hard to get here for someone (especially Hotch) to jump to conclusions about it.

“I don’t need details,” he continues. “But we need to discuss-”

“It’s not an affair, Aaron,” she says sharply and his gaze snaps to her. “I love him. And that means that we aren’t going to discuss shit about it.”

Hotch’s scowl melts away into an expression she’s never seen on him before. It’s like astonishment, but tinged with sadness. He stares at her that way for thirty seconds and then forces himself to look away.

“Love?” he says quietly, thumbing the edge of a file absently.

“Y-yes.” She watches as the word sinks into him. He rolls his jacket across his shoulders once, as if he’s uncomfortable, and then it hits her and the anger she feels changes to sadness in an instant. _I guess his track record of making love to women he cares about remains unblemished…_

“Aaron…” she murmurs.

“Okay then.” His back straightens and whatever he feels disappears under his professionalism once again.

“Okay then what?”

“You’re right: there’s nothing to discuss,” he says formally and pulls a folder from his pending pile. “Just watch your proximity at work and we’re fine.”

She blinks a couple of times trying to catch up with his shift in gears. “O- alright… of course we will…”

She stands there in silence for a few excruciating moments. He’s flipping through the folder contents as if she’s already walked out of the room. She wants to say something else but she knows she won’t, and it would only embarrass him. So she pulls herself together and shakes it off, turning towards the door while huffing out _‘Right’_ in the process.

“Emily,” his voice stops her with its softness. She turns back and sees that the tone is mirrored in his stare. “I’m happy for you. For you both.”

“Are you?” she murmurs.

“Yes, I am.” He’s giving her a look of absolute sincerity and she’s going to respect him and believe it.

“Thank you, Aaron. That means a lot to me.”

He nods once and watches her for a second longer, and then his eyes drop to his file again. Conversation over. 

She leaves him behind and wanders back to her desk, brushing Reid’s shoulder as she passes him and settles into her chair. His eyebrows rise when he catches her eye, _‘So?’_ She smiles and gives him a wink, _‘We’re fine, don’t worry.’_ He sags back into his chair making it creak; he lets out a long sigh, _‘Really?’_ She leans forward a little, trying to funnel the stability that they’ve created away from the office into her gaze, _‘Promise.’_ His face transforms into an amazing smile, all relief and quiet joy. It makes her ache to touch it. Then he slowly drops a hand along his desk, stretching it towards the partition that separates them and pressing it flat as if he’s trying to warm her unseen hand with his. It’s all he can do to tell her how happy he is, to let her know that this is so much more than a win for them. It’s a conflict they no longer have to fight about or dread facing, and it also cements an understanding in their professional lives that’s already established in their personal ones. Suddenly she feels that they can handle anything.

“I’m proud of us,” he murmurs almost too soft to catch.

She looks up and sees him blushing slightly, her heart kicking out big, weighty beats all of a sudden. An image pops into her head of both of them, wrinkled and grey-haired walking hand in hand through the city as they argue about old cases or talk about books or razz each other about something ridiculous. It’s so clear to her in its details that it feels like a memory rather than a daydream. When she thinks that only a year ago such an image would’ve been impossible to conjure up, let alone believe in, she sees how much he’s changed her.

“I’m proud of us too.” She feels it down to her last inch.

“Hey guys,” Garcia’s voice interrupts their revelry as she rushes past them. “Conference room. We caught a red ball.”

Emily pulls out her game face and she and Reid rise from their desks together to hustle to the conference suite. He pauses for her to pass him, his palm brushing across the small of her back as they mount the stairs together, but when she looks back at him he’s already locked in and focused on whatever’s to come in the briefing. It’s just who they are now: a team that seamlessly works and plays together with equal attention. She sighs to herself and smiles briefly. Thank God they’ve finally figured this all out. Now they can get back to work…


End file.
